Southwest Research Institute – Xybion Camera Mockup

Human-tended astronomy missions from suborbital platforms are largely unexplored with great potential for Earth observation and imagery of objects in space. The Xybion camera is an innovative wide-field visible and ultraviolet imager used for astronomical experiments on two Space Shuttle missions. On a future NASA-funded suborbital flight, Alan will operate the camera to compare the efficacy of doing onboard astronomy on VSS Unity to its efficacy on the Space Shuttle. For the ‘Galactic 05’ mission, Alan flew with a full-sized foam mockup of this camera for training and risk-reduction practice purposes before the NASA-funded flight.