Abstract The present status of the ESA cornerstone mission FIRST is presented. A recent industrial study has generated a spacecraft concept employing a 4.5 m passively cooled telescope with focal plane instrument cooling provided by a superfluid helium cryostat. The model payload complement includes two direct detection instruments as well as two heterodyne instruments. After a shared launch by Ariane 5 into GTO, FIRST propels itself into the 24-hour highly eccentric operational orbit, where observations can be conducted up to 17 hours per day with an expected approximate mission duration of 3 years. An additional complementary study of a non-cryostat spacecraft option will also be performed.


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    Title :

    FIRST — Far Infrared and Submillimetre Space Telescope


    Contributors:

    Published in:

    Advances in Space Research ; 13 , 12 ; 545-548


    Publication date :

    1993-01-01


    Size :

    4 pages




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English



    FIRST-Far Infrared and Submillimetre Space Telescope

    Pilbratt, G. | Online Contents | 1993


    FIRST-Far Infrared and Submillimetre Space Telescope

    Pilbratt, G. / COSPAR | British Library Conference Proceedings | 1993


    FIRST : Far Infrared and Submillimetre Space Telescope

    Kaldeich, Brigitte ;Kaldeich-Schürmann, Brigitte | SLUB | 1990


    The Far-Infrared and Submillimetre Space Telescope (FIRST)

    Genzel, R. / Frisk, U. | Elsevier | 1991


    FIRST - Far Infrared and Submillimetre Telescope

    Pilbratt, G. | British Library Online Contents | 1992