NASA is planning to send a cutting-edge 8.4 foot telescope into the stratosphere carried by a helium-filled balloon the size of a football stadium.
Expected to launch in December 2023 from Antarctica, the telescope, dubbed ASTHROS (short for Astrophysics Stratospheric Telescope for High Spectral Resolution Observations at Submillimetre-wavelengths), will spend about three weeks drifting on air currents roughly four times higher than commercial airliners fly, observing wavelengths of light that are invisible to the human eye, NASA said.
ASTHROS will carry an instrument to measure the motion and speed of gas around newly formed stars to understand how different types of planets form in young solar systems.
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