Creating a time machine may seem out of the realm of research conducted by Utah State University’s Space Dynamics Laboratory, but a new grant from NASA has asked SDL for help to do just that.

SDL’s latest mission will contribute to a new telescope that will have the capability to look back several billions of years in time at stars and galaxies that have never before been observed.

SDL’s $40 million chunk of the $200 million project will develop portions of a new infrared telescope that will map the entire sky by measuring heat radiation coming from objects, including those that can’t be seen in the visible light spectrum. The telescope, called WISE (Wise-field Infrared Survey Explorer), will be the first infrared telescope in 22 years to carry out a survey of the whole sky.

“The telescope will seek galaxies that are billions of years old, whose starlight began traveling through space long before Earth ever existed,” says Harry Ames, SDL deputy director. “We will see new galaxies because we’ll have several thousand times better resolution and sensitivity than was available two decades ago.”

The WISE telescope will be small—less than 20 inches in diameter—yet it will be up to 500,000 times more accurate than those used in previous expeditions. WISE will be able to detect and identify a staggering amount of celestial objects and phenomena including hundreds of thousands of galaxies, stars, and asteroids.

“The scientists expect to identify the closest star to the sun and discover millions of new stars that are just too cold to see in the visible spectrum,” says Scott Schick, SDL WISE program director.

Astronomical modeling predicts there are stars that have been “invisible” to us because they are dimly lit and don’t put out much heat—sometimes just room temperature or below. Also, interstellar dust prevents us from seeing more than a few percent of the stars in the Milky Way in visible light. Infrared light, however, passes through the dust, allowing WISE to map the location and structure of these low-temperature stars.

“Some of these underdeveloped stars, called brown dwarfs, may be closer to the sun than any other previously-identified star,” says Ames. In fact, scientists expect that two-thirds of the stars we don’t yet know about will be discovered by the WISE telescope.

WISE will also detect thousands of asteroids. Though they generate no heat of their own, asteroids absorb most of the sunlight that hits them, allowing them to heat up and glow in the mid-infrared. WISE will be able to detect that heat and measure the diameters of more than 100,000 asteroids, which may also help detect any that would be on a course for earth, says Schick.

To detect these cooler objects in the universe, the telescope itself must be kept very cold—about -430 degrees Fahrenheit—by a cryostat, which is like an ice chest but filled with solid hydrogen instead of ice.

“It is basically a high performance thermos container that will allow the hydrogen to last up to one year in space to provide cooling for the instrument,” Schick says.

Further away, WISE will find the most luminous galaxies in the Universe, called Ultra-Luminous Infrared Galaxies (ULIRGs), which result from the merger of galaxies triggering intense bursts of star formation, most of which is enshrouded by clouds of dust.

After it is launched in 2008, WISE will spend up to 12 months orbiting about 800 miles above the earth, taking pictures of the sky. Infrared photos will be taken every 11 seconds, each one covering a portion of the sky about three times the size of the full moon. After six months, more than 1.5 million pictures will be produced, providing a full overview of the sky.

Computers on the ground will then combine the many images taken by WISE into an atlas covering the entire celestial sphere and a list of all the detected objects.

SDL’s part of WISE will be to provide the science instrument, instrument integration, and launch support for the mission. SDL won the contract after competing with many organizations, says Ames.

“The mission will complete the basic reconnaissance of the universe in mid-infrared wavelengths, providing a vast storehouse of knowledge that will endure for decades,” said Dr. Peter Eisenhardt, project scientist for the mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “This catalogue of data will also provide NASA’s future James Webb Space Telescope with a comprehensive list of targets.”

“This is a phenomenal project for SDL to be a part of,” says Schick. “The data collected from the experiment will be utilized for many, many years, and we can say we are a part of that legacy.”

- Erin Didericksen