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A proposed space telescope program led by a Tucson-based astronomer is in a three-way race to answer the era's biggest cosmological question: What is causing the expanding universe to accelerate?

Tod R. Lauer, an astronomer at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, is the principal investigator — the lead scientist — on Destiny, the Dark Energy Space Telescope.

This space telescope, if it is chosen by NASA for its Joint Dark Energy Mission or JDEM, wouldn't launch until 2013; Then it would seek roughly 3,000 supernovas during its two-year primary mission. Lauer said the point would be to measure the expansion history of the universe.

"We're using supernovas as beacons," says Lauer. "Think of them as the standard. We know how bright they are. You know how bright they are in periods of the universe."

After that, NOAO spokesman Douglas Isbell said, the space telescope would begin a year-long survey.

Combined, they say, the studies would provide 10 times the sensitivity of current ground-based dark-energy observations.

NOAO, which operates Kitt Peak National Observatory, the National Solar Observatory and the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, has its headquarters on the University of Arizona campus. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center is partnered with the NOAO-led Destiny team.

Last month NASA awarded the Destiny team $2 million to continue its development.

Lauer compared it to designing a house, with stages ranging from "drawing on a napkin," to hiring an architect, refining the plans, creating blueprints and, eventually, building it.

Destiny would employ a 1.65-meter primary mirror, Lauer said, considerably smaller than the Hubble Space Telescope's 2.4-meter telescope.

Lauer said employing proven, existing technology and using it to exactingly target the project's goals are strengths in a competitive process.

"There's nothing huge and gigantic, in terms of technology," Lauer said of Destiny. "We're just going to put it together."

He acknowledges that one of the other proposals has a head start and an advantage.

Lauer refers to the University of California-Berkeley-led SuperNova/Acceleration Probe — SNAP — as "the granddaddy" because it was the first of the projects planned, and at one time was the only project until the Department of Energy teamed up with NASA on the JDEM project; that required opening it up to competing proposals.

The other Joint Dark Energy Mission proposal, by a Johns Hopkins-led team, is known as ADEPT — for Advanced Dark Energy Physics Telescope.

Uncertainty remains, Lauer says, beyond the three-way competition. It is still not a certainty that any of these JDEM projects will be funded, although he says there is no argument about whether the question they seek to answer is immensely interesting and important.

"Dark energy is the biggest thing in astronomy," says Lauer. "I grew up reading about astronomy and the whole idea was that the expansion (of the universe) is slowing down. You throw a ball, you don't expect the darned thing to speed up.

"A profoundly basic idea is broken. It's physics that's unknown, a deep and profound mystery that physics cannot answer today."