A New Life for Echo

The telescope in this picture is wildly popular with teenagers. Thousands of students in classrooms in 27 states and 13 countries use it to make new discoveries about the solar system and the Universe.

You may say, "But it doesn't even look like a telescope! And how can so many people use it at once, and from so far away?"

First, it is not an ordinary telescope that sees visible light, like your eyes see. It is a radio telescope. It detects radio waves. Although radio waves are created by humans for such purposes as sending TV and radio signals, natural objects make radio waves too. Radio waves are much longer than visible light waves, so a special telescope is needed to detect them.

This particular radio telescope used to be "Deep Space Station-12 at the Echo site." It was part of the Deep Space Network of antennas that track NASA's faraway spacecraft. About 10 years ago, when NASA no longer needed Echo, it dedicated Echo to education.

Now, teachers come from all over to the Lewis Center for Educational Research in Apple Valley, California (about 80 miles from the Goldstone antenna complex where Echo resides), to learn to operate the radio telescope. That is why Echo is now called GAVRT (for Goldstone-Apple Valley Radio Telescope). Teachers then return home to their classrooms and teach students how to operate GAVRT using the internet! Students do real research, learning about Jupiter and other fascinating sources of radio waves.

Maybe someday your class, too, can operate GAVRT and help scientists make brand new discoveries. Meanwhile, find out just how sensitive these antennas are at spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/kids/dsn_fact1.shtml.

This article was written by Diane K. Fisher and provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.