The International Space Station may be port of call for a free-flying telescope capable of not only probing the depths of the Universe, but also listening for the chatter of other civilizations and spotting Earth-threatening asteroids.

The Submillimetron Project is underway by a team of researchers from Sweden, Finland and Russia. This new telescope would be home-based at the Russian segment of the International Space Station (ISS). When periodically docked to the orbiting outpost, this astronomical tool can be serviced by a crew and then dispatched to continue its research work.

Designed to operate at super-cold temperatures, the telescope permits astronomical peeks at the Cosmos in unprecedented wavelengths. The primary goal is to conduct a submillimeter wave, full sky survey.

High sensitivity of the telescope to cold bodies permits it to detect asteroids at a distance far beyond Jupiter's orbit. So along with the Submillimetron Project's astrophysics and cosmology agenda, suggests the scientific team promoting the telescope, the space-based eye can provide early warning to Earth of menacing asteroids.

The Submillimetron operates at a terahertz waveband, at a boundary between infrared rays and microwave frequency, explained Vladimir Gromov, an astronomer at the Astro Space Center in Moscow, one of the organizations working on the concept.

Playing the role of a supersensitive "ear", the telescope also makes use of supersensitive arrays and radio electronics. These can hear the "voice of the sky at a new bandwidth", and are capable of eavesdropping on an extraterrestrial civilization.

"With the help of this device [the Submillimetron], the astronomers and physicists will be able to answer the questions they are not even thinking about yet. Probably, they will hear the voice of an extraterrestrial civilization. Or perhaps they will discover something absolutely new, for instance, a type of substance previously unknown," explains a release on the project.

Gromov told SPACE.com that the Submillimetron is specially intended to look for objects billions of light years distant from Earth. "The goal is to detect more than a million such objects," he said.

No space, ground-based or balloon instruments planned for this decade can fulfill the task feasible with the Submillimetron, claim supporters of the project.

Using the telescope to look for other star folk is a task readily handled by the Submillimetron.

Gromov said that the telescope could detect so-called Dyson Spheres, a manifestation of a developed civilization. "No real need for some civilization to send informative signals through space. But any civilization must consume energy and, as a result, dissipates heat, and therefore generates infrared radiation," he said.

Nobody knows the spectrum of Dyson Sphere radiation, Gromov said. "Probably it's absolutely different from that of other astronomical objects. We plan to analyze detected sources of this subject," he added.

"It has been approved for flight to the Russian segment," Gromov said, but gaining the financial wherewithal to keep scientific instruments for the telescope moving forward is an issue.

The Russian Academy of Sciences supports bringing the project to fruition. A feasibility study of the Submillimetron was undertaken by the S.P. Korolev Rocket Space Corporation Energia, and approved by the Russian Space Agency for flight to the ISS after the 2004-2005 time period.

A preliminary estimate of building the scientific space platform (SSP), replete with the Submillimetron, is less than $150 million.

The free-flying SSP is based on a modified Russian Progress cargo craft.

First, the SSP-carried Submillimetron would be lofted and docked to the International Space Station. An ISS crew could final check the equipment prior to release.

Set loose, the platform-carried telescope would be maneuvered far away from the space station, perhaps to a higher orbit. Once the telescope is in position, super-cold liquid helium is used to chill sky-scanning equipment, thereby increasing the sensitivity of the Submillimetron's telescopic gear.

At mission end -- which could be years in the making -- the platform is brought back to the space station. After redocking to the ISS, the scope's instruments undergo a Hubble Space Telescope-like maintenance job. Thus, replacement of old equipment with new technology is made feasible. There is significant volume onboard the SSP for it to carry a bevy of other studies. Another goal of the project is to provide a test bed for a variety of technological experiments, to help seed the development of follow-on projects.

Once checked-out and its cryogen topped off, the Submillimetron is re-launched from the ISS - picking-up where its sight and sound chores last left off.

Valery Altunin, a researcher at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said the proposed telescope offers good science, as well as helping in other, "political" issues. "There are not too many astronomy experiments yet proposed to be deployed on the ISS," he said.

The projected sensitivity of the space telescope assumes the use of new type of sensors. "Although a lot of work was done, this new technology is not mature yet," Altunin said. Moving the Submillimetron project ahead needs strong partnerships with scientists from multiple nations, including the United States.

"The overall assessment is that the project may succeed…but it is a long road to success," Altunin said.