Thomas Paine Space Telescope

Thomas Paine Space Telescope
General Information
Alias	Thomas Paine orbital telescope
Type	Space telescope
Operator
Location	LEO
Purpose	Astronomical research
Crewed	No
History
First used	around 1988
Upgrades	Repairs: Mid July 1992
Patch

The Thomas Paine Space Telescope (TPST) is a powerful telescope in Earth's orbit. It is named in the honor of the late NASA administrator Thomas Paine, and was launched aboard a Pathfinder shuttle some time before 1989.

The space telescope is operated by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

History

In mid July 1992, the Space Shuttle Enterprise was sent for a mission to do repairs on the telescope, which were successfully completed on July 17.

After the turn of the millennium, the telescope was used to identify and map asteroids as candidates for mining.

In 2003, NASA astronomers detected an unknown asteroid in the vincinity of Jupiter on images taken by the telescope. The object was given the designation 2003LC and further studies assumed it to contain an estimate of 70,000 metric tons of Iridium^W, worth $20 trillion, which led to the asteroid be named "Goldilocks".

Gallery

TV broadcast about the launch of the TPST

Former NASA administrator Thomas Paine

Paine Telescope maps asteroids (late 90s)

TPST communication array

Data dawnload from TPST

Season 3 patch, showing Hubble (see BTS below)

Season 4 patch (embroidery)

Behind the scenes

The footage used for the Thomas Paine Telescope shows the James Webb Space Telescope^W (JWST) of our timeline, which was launched on December 25, 2021, 14 years later than initially planned.

The mission patch, however, shows the Hubble Space Telescope^W. The patch was created at the beginning of production of season 3 and is the one used on set. Probably, after the successful launch of the JWST, they decided to use footage from JWST instead of Hubble.

Also, while the James Webb Telescope operates at the Sun–Earth L₂ Lagrange point^W, the Thomas Paine telescope is located in low Earth orbit^W, like the Hubble telecope is in reality.

Although the telescope was both mentioned and shown on mission boards to be in LEO during season 3, in season 4 it is shown to be much farther away. From the size of Earth as seen from the telescope's perspective, it seems now to be located way beyond lunar orbit, which would match the location of the real JWST.

See also

• Thomas Paine
• Skylab
• MoonLab