MIT completes new telescope for research in re-entry phenomena [Progress in Techimology]

The function of a high-speed tracking spectrometric telescope is to probe the trails of man-made meteors for clues to the solution of pressing problems in missile defense and space-capsule re-entry. MIT´s Lincoln Laboratory has designed and built a 48-inch high-speed-tracking spectrometric telescope capable of locking onto the elusive glow from a small, faint, fast-moving target, and of tracking such a target accurately and automatically at high speeds. It can make numerous detailed quantitative optical analyses and measurements of the reentry glow during the few seconds that it exists.