A New Eye on Earth's Edge: UC Berkeley-Guided Space Telescope Has Liftoff | KQED

"This week, a rocket lifted off from Florida's Kennedy Space Center carrying a new space telescope to its parking spot about 1 million miles from Earth, guided by mission operators at the Space Sciences Laboratory at UC Berkeley. During a visit to the Berkeley lab's mission control room on Thursday, everything appeared calm and smooth as operators and technicians worked to bring the Carruthers systems online in a process known as "commissioning" the spacecraft."

"About an hour and a half after the launch, the spacecraft cleanly separated from the rocket. "And we gave a big round of applause, of course," he said. About 30 minutes later, the team achieved what they call first contact - a nerve-wracking moment in any mission when they establish communication. "Will the spacecraft respond? Is it still alive?" Tripathi said. "And it was. So we all finally exhaled. After that, we got down to business.""

""There are maybe two universities in the country that can run a mission like this," said Lindy Elkins-Tanton, newly installed director of the lab. "Our big strength over time has been space weather. What does the sun do to space?" she said. "What kind of radiation does it put out? How does it affect our Earth's atmosphere? How does it interact with the magnetic field? Things tha"

A rocket launched from Kennedy Space Center carried the Carruthers space telescope to a targeted parking orbit about one million miles from Earth. Mission operators at UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory are controlling and commissioning the spacecraft from a mission operations center. Instrument and system status displays showed healthy indicators as engineers activated systems and monitored telemetry. The spacecraft separated cleanly about ninety minutes after launch and mission control established first contact roughly thirty minutes later, confirming the spacecraft was responsive. The lab emphasizes expertise in space weather and studies of solar radiation, atmospheric effects and magnetic interactions.

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