NASA Plans to Build a Gigantic Space Telescope from 2 Tiny CubeSats - Scientific American
https://www.scientificamerican.com/...lans-to-build-a-gigantic-space-telescope-from-2-tiny-cubesats/
More than 400 years after Galileo handcrafted his first spyglass, NASA and South Korea's Yonsei University aim to create a “virtual” telescope
in space by using two separate spacecraft. To test the concept, scientists have built two small satellites called cubesats that will practice
lining up in orbit to construct a single telescope with a focal length as large as the distance between them. Scheduled for launch in early 2017,
the roughly $1-million mission could pave the way for a new class of instrument that can peer through the sun's glare or at distant alien planets,
without requiring a massive single scope.
The six-month mission—called “CubeSat Astronomy by NASA and Yonsei using Virtual telescope ALignment eXperiment” (CANYVAL-X)—will try out
a technique for forming a telescope that would otherwise be much heavier to launch. The plan requires two spacecraft (together the size of a bread loaf)
to orbit together in a straight line, always pointed at their target. “Flying two spacecraft in coordination, aligning them to a distant source and holding
that configuration is a capability that has never been attempted,” says Neerav Shah, an aerospace engineer at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
