The European Space Agency has launched a project to test whether technological advances can be speeded up in quantum leaps. The Star Tiger project will gather together a small team of enthusiastic scientists and engineers with a range of expertise from around Europe, put them together for four months at a location with state-of-the-art facilities, remove distractions and administrative burdens, and give them a technically challenging project.
"With Star Tiger we want to reduce dramatically the turn-around time for state-of-the art technology developments," says Niels Jensen, ESA's Head of Technology Programme Department. "A small group of researcher and experts will be given the possibility to concentrate just on their R&D. They will be able to try-out new ideas on the spot, select or eliminate new paths as soon as identified and make prototypes on the fly."
The team will be recruited from across Europe and members will have the opportunity to work in a small group of like-minded scientists and engineers, and endeavour to produce a terahertz imager operating in two frequencies, 250GHz and 300GHz. The team has been given the task of imaging a human hand in more or less real time.