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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Instead of Building Single Monster Scopes like James Webb, What About Swarms of Space Telescopes Working Together? [universetoday.com]

Jayce Dowell and Gregory B. Taylor, a research assistant professor and professor (respectively) with the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of New Mexico [...] outlined their idea in a study titled "The Swarm Telescope Concept [arxiv.org]", which recently appeared online and was accepted for publication by the Journal of Astronomical Instrumentation.

[...] Instead of a single instrument, the telescope would consist of a distributed array where many autonomous elements come together through a data transport system to function as a single facility. This approach, they claim, would be especially useful when it comes to the Next Generation Very Large Array [nrao.edu] (NGVLA) – a future interferometer that will build on the legacy of the Karl G. ansky Very Large Array [nrao.edu] and Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array [almaobservatory.org] (ALMA). As they state in their study:

At the core of the swarm telescope is a shift away from thinking about an observatory as a monolithic entity. Rather, an observatory is viewed as many independent parts that work together to accomplish scientific observations. This shift requires moving part of the decision making about the facility away from the human schedulers and operators and transitioning it to "software defined operators" that run on each part of the facility. These software agents then communicate with each other and build dynamic arrays to accomplish the goals of multiple observers, while also adjusting for varying observing conditions and array element states across the facility.

Original Submission