I am working on a project to build a space telescope named SNAP, SuperNova Acceleration Probe. We have applied for funding with NASA and the Department of Energy and are competing with two other projects named DESTINY and ADEPT. Crossing all of our fingers, we hope to launch the satellite into an orbit one million miles from Earth in the middle of the next decade.
Whenever I describe this project to someone for the first time, it's easiest to say that we are trying to build a new and improved Hubble Space Telescope, named after Edwin Hubble. This isn't quite true, but it's pretty close. The excitement lies in the new perspective SNAP will provide. Think of being able to see the entire moon at a fine level of detail as we can only see a small crater on the moon with Hubble. That's what gets me out of bed in the morning.
The Hubble Space Telescope performs different observations for different science missions several times a day. SNAP, however, will be entirely dedicated to two missions. First, we will search for and observe approximately 2000 very distant supernovae. These supernovae are very important in cosmology for measuring the shape of the universe. We will then observe very distant galaxies across the sky to understand the timeline of the evolution of the universe (hint: it's a long timeline). I will continue to revisit these very important topics for the cosmology community in later posts.
More than 100 people were at a recent SNAP collaboration meeting in Paris, coming from as far away as Vancouver, Ann Arbor, Pasadena, and Philadelphia (better luck next year, Eagles). Like in all good meetings and cocktail parties, they discussed a slew of topics, ranging from the complicated effects of image quality on the data to my personal favorite, the maintenance of the SNAP Myspace page.
A few months ago, I actually logged into Myspace for the first time in my life to see what all the fuss was about. I found that SNAP, as a 20 yr old female from Berkeley, has made 38 friends. Some of the more impressive friends were XMM-Newton, SWIFT, and GLAST, all space-based astronomical telescopes. And, to boot, I even found Weird Al Yankovic in SNAP's extended network. Unfortunately I just checked again last night and found that he has cut off his friendship. I hear his latest hit is "White and Nerdy", but I guess SNAP no longer qualifies.
