1st commercial astronomy spacecraft Twinkle set for launch in 2024
The world's first commercial astronomy mission, Twinkle, is gaining traction among exoplanet researchers as it takes steps toward launch in 2024 with funding secured to commence satellite construction early next year.
In 2014, when University College London (UCL) astronomy postdoc Marcell Tessenyi first entertained the idea to develop the world's first commercial astronomy mission, he knew he would have to overcome a lot of resistance. For decades, government-funded space agencies like NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) were in charge of expensive space telescope projects that took decades to develop and cost billions of dollars.
The model didn't always work well for the scientific community, but it was all they knew. Seven years later, the private exoplanet-watcher Twinkle is backed by more than 10 universities from all over the world, has received ESA funding and will soon be built by the European aerospace giant Airbus.
For Tessenyi, exoplanets were love at first sight. But when he decided to pursue this interest during his Ph.D. in astronomy at UCL, he found that the study of the strange worlds orbiting distant stars was marred with obstacles. NASA's Kepler Space Telescope was frequently in the news back then, discovering hundreds of new exoplanets, but there was no convenient tool that would make it possible to learn more about them.
