NASA’s Floating Telescopes Will Image the Cold Universe

NASA wants a new type of space telescope. A team of scientists and engineers at NASA are developing ways to send ultra cold and ultra large balloon telescopes to the edge of space, which could open up a brand new way of seeing the cosmos. »Subscribe to Seeker! http://bit.ly/subscribeseeker »Watch more Focal Point | https://bit.ly/2s0cf7w » Visit our shop at http://shop.seeker.com NASA, SpaceX and Blue Origin are practically synonymous with rockets... those massive, powerful vehicles allow us to travel beyond Earth. But while the ongoing competition to launch the world's next best rocket tends to dominate news headlines, there’s a little known mission at NASA to develop a new kind of space telescope… and this project is using something else entirely - balloons. You can do more science in a single balloon flight than you could do from years and years of observing from any of these existing observatories. You can take technology risks on a balloon that would never be able to take on a space mission. So, you can do all kinds of crazy things. Like sending massive telescopes that are cooled to near absolute zero to the edge of space. These ultra cold, balloon telescopes could heighten our understanding of the universe overnight. Not only can you see things that you wouldn't be able to see but you can look for things well beyond our own galaxy and even to the edge of the universe all the way back to the Big Bang. #NASA #telescope #technology #seeker #science #focalpoint Read More: This historic form of transportation could be the future of space exploration https://www.inverse.com/innovation/stratosphere-balloon-upgrades “Today, balloons are largely relegated to party decorations and state-fair rides, but once hot air balloons were the cutting edge of transport technology, able to convey people and things to places humans had never ventured before. Now, scientists are turning to balloons once more — this time, as a way to create floating space observatories and i