The Lowell Oberservatory has created an Amateur Research Initiative. Lowell is seeking help from citizen scientists in several areas. Some projects require citizen scientists to have their own telescopes, while others can be performed only.

Projects that require telescopes include obtaining ultra-deep images of dwarf galaxies, creating light curves for slowly rotating asteroids, determining stellar rotation periods and finding stellar eclipses and giant planet transits, improving the orbits of Centaurs and Kuiper Belt Objects, and monitoring star-forming regions for outburst events.

Other projects include examining old image to find asteroids that were missed by an automated search; examining photometric data for signs of exoplanets, variables stars, or other transient objects; and identifying historic scientific instruments from the Lowell Observatory’s extensive collection.

NASA has signed a Space Act agreement which turns the nine-year-old, $150-million Galaxy Evolution Explorer (Galex) ultraviolet space telescope over to the California Institute of Technology. Caltech will raise money from various sources to put the telescope back into operation.

Committed funders are the Keck Institute of Space Studies, a consortium of Israeli universities led by the Weizmann Institute of Science near Tel Aviv, Cornell University, and an international consortium that goes by the unwieldy name of GAMA/Herschel-Atlas/DINGO. Caltech is seeking additional funds from private donors, philanthropic foundations, and corporate sponsors.

If this Space Act is successful, it might provide a model for other space telescopes such as Hubble, which NASA plans to decommission in a few years. NASA plans to replace Hubble with the James Webb Space Telescope, but Webb is designed primarily for observations in the infrared, rather than visible wavelengths. There is likely to be some unhappiness when the public realizes that the visible-light images, which have made Hubble so popular, will be coming to an end. With the advent of low-cost launch and space servicing, it might be possible to keep space observatories like Hubble operational indefinitely. The question is, will the low-cost revolution come soon enough, or will Hubble be deorbited before it arrives, much as Skylab came down while waiting for the Shuttle to become operational?

Galaxy Zoo, the Zooniverse project that asks citizen scientists to help classify galaxies in Hubble Space Telescope images, has an iPhone app. Citizen scientists on the go can now classify galaxies on their iPhone (or iPad or iPod Touch).

You can download the Galaxy Zoo app from the App Store on iTunes. Galaxy Zoo also has an Android app available on Google Play.

There’s been considerable debate in the last few years about the relative merits of orbital assembly versus superheavy lift.

The argument for superheavy lift is pretty straightforward. Very large rockets enable payloads to be launched in one piece. Their advantage is not simply in the weight they can carry but, more importantly, in their large-diameter payload shrouds. Those very-large shrouds come in very handy for launching things like large-aperture telescope mirrors for future very large space telescopes.

In 2007, for example, NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center did a study of how future space telescopes could be launched on the then-proposed Ares V rocket.

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A senior review by outside experts has recommended that NASA extend the operating life of the Hubble and Kepler space telescopes.

If NASA accepts the recommendations, which seems likely, Kepler would get another four years of life. That is a major extension for the exoplanet telescope, which was originally designed for a 3.5-year mission. Kepler has been in orbit for just over three years.

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NASA’s space-science program is in crisis. This is partly due to limitations on the overall NASA budget and competition from other programs, such as the Senate-mandated Space Launch System, but it’s mainly due to budget overruns within the space-science program, particularly the flagship James Webb Space Telescope.

The JWST was supposed to cost $1.6 billion and launch in 2011. Now, it is estimated that the telescope will cost $8.7 billion and won’t launch until 2018. The House Appropriations Committee tried to cancel the JWST in 2011, because of the cost overruns. The Senate saved the JWST, but the cost of its salvation is likely to be major cuts in NASA’s unmanned Mars programs and other science missions.

JWST may have dodged the bullet in 2011, but there is no guarantee it will continue to do so in the future, especially if costs continue to escalate. So, now seems like a good time to ask the question: If the James Webb Space Telescope is cancelled, what could NASA do in its place? Read the rest of this entry »