NASA Space Apps Challenge · 7 to 8 October 2023
StellarVisionX
A telescope that orbits close to the Sun and looks sideways, so that comets coming in toward it are seen on their way.
Why
In August 2023 a Japanese amateur astronomer found comet Nishimura by accident, when it was already about 1 AU from the Sun. It went on to pass within 43 million km of it. Comets that come in like that are hard to spot from Earth, and the big telescopes point away from the Sun. We thought a telescope parked near the Sun, watching the plane the planets move in, would see more of them, and could measure solar flares while it waited.
What
StellarVisionX sits about 42 million km from the Sun. Instead of one instrument facing forward it carries two cameras pointed to the sides, along the orbital plane. That is where comets and planets actually are, and where a comet darting toward the Sun shows up first.
The body is derived from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe: a sun shield for the heat, solar panels with a cooling system for the arrays, a double imager with a wide field of view, and the communication system. We built the concept, the orbit and the renders over the hackathon weekend.
Team Vision Beyond
- Mohamad MansourTeam lead · computer and communication engineering
- Ziad FarhatComputer engineering
- Reem ZahreddineMember
- Lucia NassimBiology
- Kosay DarwishMember