BRITE: World's smallest space telescope launched

BRITE, the smallest astronomical satellite was launched Monday as part of a mission to prove that even a very small telescope can push the boundaries of astronomy.

The satellite was designed and assembled at the Space Flight Laboratory (SFL) of the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS).

It will be launched from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, India, along with its twin, also designed in Canada, but assembled in Austria.

Each nano-satellite in the BRIght Target Explorer (BRITE) mission is a cube 20 cms per side, and weighing less than 7 kilograms.

The BRITE satellites are part of the new wave of nano-satellites that can be designed, assembled and deployed fast and relatively cheaply.

"SFL has demonstrated that nano-satellites can be developed quickly, by a small team and at a cost that is within reach of many universities, small companies and other organizations," says Cordell Grant, Manager of Satellite Systems for the Space Flight Laboratory at UTIAS.

"A nano-satellite can take anywhere from six months to a few years to develop and test, but we typically aim for two years or less."

Up to now, such nano-satellites had been used only to monitor the earth and experiment with new technologies.

"Researchers, scientists and companies worldwide, who have great ideas for space-borne experiments, but do not have the means to fund a large spacecraft, can now see their ideas realized," said Grant.

"BRITE has the potential to open an entirely new market for low-cost high-performance satellites."

BRITE is the first nano-satellite mission intended for astronomy, and the first-ever astronomy constellation -more than one satellite working toward a common objective- of any size.

The previous world-record holder for small astronomy satellites was the MOST satellite, designed and assembled in part by SFL at UTIAS.

Launched in 2003 and still operating, MOST was the first entirely Canadian satellite for astronomy, weighing in at 53 kilograms. Compared to the 11 metric tons of the Hubble Space Telescope, MOST was aptly called a micro-satellite.

"BRITE is expected to demonstrate that nano-satellites are now capable of performance that was once thought impossible for such small spacecraft," says Grant. But only small telescopes can fit within a 20 centimetre cube.

Therefore, BRITE is not intended to take pretty pictures, but will simply observe stars and record changes in their brightness over time.

Such changes could be caused by spots on the star, a planet or other star orbiting the star, or by oscillations and reverberations within the star itself -the analogue of earthquakes on stars.

The study of these so-called "starquakes" is called astero-seismology.