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31
“Of course. So you see the panel 
marked ‘telescope sighting control’ ? 
Tap on the icon that says ‘GoTo slewing’.”
“Ok, I did that. It says I should input co-ordinates.”
“Yes, I’ve got those for you,” says Doctor Kumar 
and then he reads out two long numbers. “That’s 
where the object will be in about 1 minute’s time. 
We need to set up the telescope to track the thing 
as it moves, once we have spotted it.”
He talks you through controls but then a warning 
flashes up.
“Hey, Doctor Kumar. It says, ‘Multi-wavelength 
observation is currently enabled. Do you wish to 
proceed?’”
“Oh heck,” he replies, “we don’t have time to sort 
that out. Just hit ‘Yes’.” You do so, as he explains, 
“We’ve got several telescopes up there. One looks 
at visible light, one looks at X-rays, one, radio-
waves and so on. This just means they’ll all move 
together and look in the same direction.”
But instead Dr Milliway is just sitting at her console, 
dribbling. You stare at the live feed from the optical 
telescope. Billions of stars should be making you 
feel awe and wonder but instead you bite your 
nails, worrying at what happens next. You jump as 
Sasha’s voice squeaks out of the smartphone.
“Kiran – we’ve got an astronomer at Earth Mission 
Control who needs you to do some things. I’m 
putting him through now.”
You prop the phone up in front of you and a young, 
friendly looking guy appears.
“Hi there! You’re Kiran, right? I’m Dr Kumar. We’re 
trying to figure out what’s going on so we’re 
looking into anything that isn’t normal. We’ve 
detected a small object in orbit around the Moon 
that wasn’t there yesterday. However, it’s too small 
for us to get a good look with our telescopes here. 
So we want you to use the ones you’ve got there, 
ok?”
“Er.. yes,” you say, “but you’re going to have to talk 
me through it.”

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