Pingie: HTTP:: Femtosecond Comb Lasers to Guide Spacecraft Formations

HTTP:: Femtosecond Comb Lasers to Guide Spacecraft Formations
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The probes, orbiters and rovers that currently explore the recesses of the solar system and beyond are only crude efforts in mankind's quest to explore the Universe. These robots currently come at very high costs, are relatively fragile, and only carry limited amounts of scientific equipment. But, in the future, space exploration will be conducted with formations of spacecraft, flying at predefined distances from each other, and in essence acting like a single, gigantic sensor. These probes will need to be able to maintain the established distance no matter what, and a new report shows that femtosecond lasers are the way this can be achieved. According to the paper, which was designed by experts at the UK National Physical Laboratory (NPL) for the European Space Agency (ESA), femtosecond comb lasers are the best, most effective way of conducting the highly precise measurements required to keep the elements of a free-flying spacecraft formation in the same relative position !
in regards to each other. A femtosecond is an extremely small unit of time, equivalent to one billionth of one millionth of a second. Because countless measurements can be conducted within a very short period of time, the distance between spacecraft could be accurately assessed, leaving only a few microns for ...
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http://news.softpedia.com/news/Femtosecond-Comb-Lasers-to-Guide-Spacecraft-Formations-123281.shtml
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