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To: Physicist
the biggest advantage to a space-based telescope would be to give you a long baseline for parallax measurements
. . . which would seem to argue for getting a telescope into deep space to get some serious parallax. Possibly a Pluto-type solar orbit?

90 posted on 07/27/2002 6:01:15 PM PDT by conservatism_IS_compassion
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion
Possibly a Pluto-type solar orbit?

No, that would not be useful. Most Earth-crossing asteroids are going to have orbits that are comparable to Earth's orbit, so the baseline you really need is much smaller than that. Further, you'd need one amazing telescope--a super-Hubble--to spot something so faint from that far out, and you sure can't service it out there. And finally, it would take many years to get such a device into such an orbit, assuming you had the capability to launch such an monster out there.

91 posted on 07/27/2002 6:16:23 PM PDT by Physicist
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