(Source : Nextgov.com – Brandi Vincent) – Air Force Lab, New Mexico Institute Get Set for ‘High-Powered Window to Space’

The Air Force Research Laboratory is engaging in a new collaboration that will provide U.S. and U.K. researchers and astronomers with one of the largest and sharpest Earth-based optical telescopes to ever operate. That sophisticated tool—the Magdalena Ridge Observatory Interferometer, or MROI—will be based in Socorro, New Mexico on a site managed by the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, or NMT.

Astronomical interferometry refers to a technique experts employ to obtain the clear resolution of a big telescope via multiple smaller telescopes. Once it’s fully completed, which is expected to be in 2026, the MROI will be made of an array of ten collecting mirrors that together will provide potentially the highest-ever resolutions of faint and complex astronomical targets, anticipated to be at over 100 times that of the Hubble Space Telescope. (…)

Read Full Article >>> https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2021/11/air-force-lab-new-mexico-institute-get-set-high-powered-window-space/187059/

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