Look out, Hubble: Penn scope to lift off

Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy Mark Devlin is ready to blast off for space, but he isn't leaving Penn anytime soon.

Devlin is heading up a group of universities collaborating on the Balloon-borne Large Aperture Sub-millimeter Telescope.

The NASA-funded telescope is designed to work above the atmosphere at 130,000 feet, enabling it to observe star and galaxy wavelengths that would otherwise be invisible when viewed from Earth because of the atmosphere's opacity.

Penn is leading the project team, which includes the University of Miami in Florida, Brown University, the University of Toronto, the University of British Columbia and the University of Cardiff in Wales, as well as the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena, Calif.

A helium balloon large enough to hold the 4,000-pound telescope will lift it out of Earth's lower atmosphere.

"It's basically like launching a Ford Expedition, holding it by a rope in the middle, pointing it at a space that is roughly 1/200 the diameter of the moon and keeping it steady," Devlin said.

Over the next six months the telescope will go through last minute fine-tuning before being shipped to a NASA base in New Mexico for a test flight.

The telescope will then be shipped to Antarctica where it will be launched for two weeks in 2004.

"We are looking at some of the first large galaxies formed in the universe," Devlin said. "By looking at stars and how they got there, as well as how fast they're forming, we can have some sense of when things started and stopped."

Devlin received the NASA grant two and a half years ago, and it has just been renewed for another three years, now totaling around $4 million.

At 36, Devlin is fairly young for his field, as are many of the other participants in the BLAST project.

"Most of the people I am involved with are from graduate school," he said. "I called them up and said, 'Hey, I have a great idea, let's do it.'"

The telescope is located in the new Facilities Services office atrium in the Left Bank building.

The question of space for the substantial piece of equipment has been an issue since the project's inception.

"Vice President for Facilities and Real Estate Services Omar Blaik and Associate School of Arts and Science Dean David Balamuth have tried very hard and have been very good to us," Devlin said. "It would be nice to have a permanent space but they have temporarily solved our problem."

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