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Chill Out

Tiny Refrigerator Saves Hubble Camera

The Hubble Space Telescope peers deep into the universe and sends breathtaking images back to Earth. But when its infrared camera, NICMOS, lost its supply of cooling liquid nitrogen the pictures stopped.

NASA turned to physicist Erin Pettyjohn and her team at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. They design and build very tiny refrigerators called cryocoolers. These little machines can cool things down to a very chilly 70 Kelvin. That's -203 C or -334 F!

One of Erin's cryocoolers is now flying on the Hubble and has "chilled out" the camera so it can be sending back amazing images for years to come.

CONCEPTS EXPLORED
Temperature scales - Fahrenheit, Celcius, Kelvin
Cryogenics
Infrared radiation
Infrared sensors
Hubble Space Telescope
NICMOS
Astronomy.
RELATED LINKS
cryogenicsociety.org
physics4kids.com
chemistryabout.com
MILITARY BRANCH
Air Force

LAB'S NDEP PAGE
Kirtland
About this Webisode
Welcome to LAB TV. We have 2 seasons of Webisodes. There are new episodes each week that demonstrate the amazing research that is everyday work at DoD labs.
Season TwoSeason One
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