World largest 3.2 billion pixel digital space survey camera gets approved

The United States sector of power has given the go-ahead to a 3.2 billion-pixel digital camera that could one day review the whole visible sky each week, and openly release six million GB of information per year.

The huge camera is called the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope camera (LSST), and when it's balanced atop the Chilean mountain of Cerro Pachón it will watch into deep space, snap broad space vistas.

The telescopic lens will control 189 sensors, and a main mirror over eight meters across. Astronomers will use this camera to study about dark energy and dark matter, and help into near-Earth asteroids, Kuiper belt objects, and the very formation of our galaxy.

The DOE has given the assignment "Critical Decision 1", which means the camera can now begin a detailed manufacturing design, timetable, and financial plan phase. If all maintain as designed, manufacture on the telescope will begin in 2014.

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope camera has designed by SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the DOE will finance the plan and manufacture of the camera, but the complete cost and logistics of the new telescope are being shared by the DOE, the National Science Foundation, and a web of community and private organizations around the world.