A SPACE-DEFENCE TELESCOPE

ONE OF THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL TELESCOPES sits on US Army property, standing a lonely vigil in the New Mexico desert. The Space Surveillance Telescope (SST), developed by DARPA, has been gazing at space for five years and spotted 3 600 new asteroids, four comets and 69 near-earth objects in that time. But such work is merely a preamble for its real job: to scour Earth’s orbit looking for threats to vital satellites, including collisions with small enemy spy spacecraft or space junk. In November, the telescope’s new US Air Force owners took over, a big step towards readying the telescope for its military mission. The SST won’t be staying in New Mexico, either. The Pentagon will relocate the telescope from the White Sands Missile Range to Harold E Holt Naval Communication Station in Western Australia. The new site is expected to be up and running in 2020. – JP