- 86 GHz
- observing frequency
- ~22 min
- target time resolution
- 87 kg
- spacecraft mass
- 2.5 m
- reflector diameter
Radio-band mission design
Proposed black-hole imaging cadence
Current mission concept
January 2026 proposal
Sagittarius A* changes on timescales too short for a conventional static image to capture. T-REX proposes adding a radio telescope in low Earth orbit to a ground-based network, using very-long-baseline interferometry to follow that motion. The spacecraft concept translates those science requirements into engineering constraints.
T-REX website
Open website ↗Reflector, thermal, and downlink design
Subsystem CAD models are developed alongside the analyses that determine how the spacecraft fits together. The reflector, receiver, structure, thermal environment, and downlink cannot be designed independently: a change in one alters the mission the others can support.
Design studies cover thermal and structural performance, observation simulations, link architectures, and data-downlink calculations. The collaboration brings together university researchers and specialists across Brown, Columbia, Princeton, JPL, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and Utah State.
86 GHz observations at a 22-minute cadence
The proposed 86 GHz observations combine an orbiting telescope with ground stations to sample the black hole as it evolves. The spacecraft’s orbit, sensitivity, and data handling all have to support the roughly 22-minute imaging goal.
T-REX is being developed as a proposal for NASA Pioneers. The mission website and technical proposal provide the current design, science case, and simulation notebooks.
Explore the T-REX geometry in 3D ↗
A geometric reconstruction of the radio-telescope concept, informed by the mission diagrams and reflector reference. Component placement is illustrative; this is not flight CAD.
Context & sources
Project records and published references provide the context below.
3D study: Illustrative T-REX spacecraft reconstruction; not flight CAD.