Space LEGO: A Behind the Scenes Look at How Space Telescopes Get Built

Location: Hotel Newport, Main Street Newport F28 YX89

Every few weeks, an exciting discovery from a space telescope makes the news: the earliest galaxies, a new planet around a distant star, a star torn apart by a black hole. Behind each of these headlines lie decades of largely unseen work. Michael Wise, Director of SRON, takes us behind the scenes.

He follows the journey from a scientific question to the technology that answers it, through years of development, until detectors, instruments, and a spacecraft built in many countries snap together, like LEGO, into a working mission.

Along the way, he explains why building missions means building people, what these missions give back to society, and why protecting our dark skies here on the ground protects discovery too.