Air Force Maui Optical and Supercomputing Observatory - Maui Space Surveillance System (MSSS)

Maui Space Surveillance System (MSSS)

The accessibility and capability of the Maui Space Surveillance System provides an unequaled opportunity to the scientific community by combining state-of-the-art satellite tracking with a facility supporting research and development.

The Maui Space Surveillance System, is routinely involved in numerous observing programs and has the capability of projecting lasers into the atmosphere.

Virtually year-round viewing conditions are possible due to the relatively stable climate. Dry, clean air and minimal scattered light from surface sources enable visibility exceeding 150 km. Based on double star observations, seeing is typically on the order of one second of arc.

Situated at the crest of the dormant volcano Haleakala (IAU code 608), the observatory stands at an altitude of 3058 metres, latitude 20.7 degrees N, and longitude 156.3 degrees W. It is essentially co-located with IAU code 566, Haleakala-NEAT/GEODSS.

In the process of accomplishing its mission, the observatory has discovered a number of asteroids.

Read more about this topic:  Air Force Maui Optical And Supercomputing Observatory

Famous quotes containing the words space and/or system:

    If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing. It would take us as long to recall a space of time as it took the original time to elapse, and we should never get ahead with our thinking. All recollected times undergo, accordingly, what M. Ribot calls foreshortening; and this foreshortening is due to the omission of an enormous number of facts which filled them.
    William James (1842–1910)

    To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.
    Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)