Autonomous Space Telepscopes...

Someone pointed out in the 'best place for a telescope' thread that
light-lag considerations limit the distance from Earth that we can
effectively remote-operate a space telescope (assuming we want to run
it from Earth, of course). So if we want to put a large-scale
multi-element scope way out in _deep_ space, it might need to be at
least somewhat autonomous.

Likewise, hypothetically somone might want to put a space telescope (or
more elaborate system) in place and let it work while they do something
else.

So suppose you were programming the computers on this thing to work
while you were absent/unavailable, especially if it was supposed to
operate unsupervised for years or decades. What would you program it
to watch for, or react to? What would your priority list be? Let's
say it's a 3 or 5 piece multi-element telescope, orbiting Sol at 20
light-hours, for convenience.


Shermanlee

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