This FALCON telescope, developed by the Center for Space Situational Awareness Research (CSSAR) in the Department of Physics at the U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA), is on display this week at FIDAE. It is the same type of telescope installed and operating in Vicuña through a partnership between Universidad de La Serena and the U.S. Air Force Academy.
Currently, there are 11 of these small aperture telescopes operating in United States and at universities in Chile, Germany, and Australia. The telescopes are all networked together and feed data into a central server at the USAFA’s Cadet Space Operations Center, and the global distribution of the FALCON network enables the simultaneous observation of one object from different geometries around the globe.
This Friday, USAFA Professor Dr. Francis Chun and Academy Cadets will give a presentation at FIDAE about how the global network operates, collects data, and enables collaborative international undergraduate space situational awareness (SSA) and astronomy research education.
