AFRL small telescopes prove value

  • Published
  • By Capt. Erin Dorrance
  • 377th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
KIRTLAND AFB, N.M. --  An engineer with the Air Force Research Lab discovered in 2007 that an inexpensive, 1-foot-diameter telescope was picking up the same satellite as a 33-foot-diameter telescope, and developed a small telescope project that has made first-time discoveries in space.

Richard Rast, a senior engineer with AFRL's Satellite Assessment Center at Kirtland, said he received his first telescope when he was 13, and has been tracking satellites ever since.

"Small telescopes are cheap, portable, and only take one person to operate, so you are more responsive to space events," he said. "You can also use them when it is windy, while big telescopes are inoperable."

Rast said that one day at work, he used his personal 1-foot telescope for a project, and was amazed that he could see the same satellite as the bigger telescopes. He told his boss about the discovery, and the small telescope project was born at AFRL.

Since the project launched, Rast has made several discoveries.

"We captured video of a laser beam fired from space with our small telescope," he said.

The laser was fired from NASA's CALIPSO satellite, and Rast saw it using a small telescope because he was able to be in the right place at the right time, because of the telescope's portability. The discovery made NASA aware that CALIPSO's laser could be an eye hazard for people on Earth.

"Bigger is not always better," he said, comparing telescopes. "We purchase our small telescopes commercially, just like any other customer. It is really about being in the right place at the right time, and being able to respond quickly."

Rast also used his small telescope to measure the tumble period of the upper stage from a rocket launch four days before Air Force Space Command's Space Surveillance Network caught the activity. He used a 2-inch telescope to confirm that a solar panel had deployed, before the SSN succeeded.

"Although small telescopes are wonderful tools, they aren't always the best tool to use," he said. "In collaboration with the University of Arizona, we were looking for lost satellites in space, and it took a large telescope for us to finally find one that had been lost for nine years. It was too far away to be picked up by a small telescope."

While Rast sometimes uses larger telescopes, his small telescope project has made so many significant discoveries that customers are requesting the cheaper technology.

"A small telescope is 1,000 times cheaper than a large telescope," he said.

Rast said he bought a house 40 miles outside Albuquerque, so he'd have a darker sky to continue seeing space and making discoveries from small telescopes in his backyard.