NASA’s ComPair Balloon Mission readies for flight
Business AnnouncementIMAGE: EXPLORE THIS INFOGRAPHIC TO LEARN MORE ABOUT COMPAIR AND SCIENTIFIC BALLOONING. view more
CREDIT: NASA’S GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER
A team in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, is preparing to fly a balloon-borne science instrument called ComPair, which will test new technologies for detecting gamma rays, the highest-energy form of light.
ComPair is slated to fly early in NASA’s 2023 fall scientific balloon campaign, which opens on Thursday, Aug. 10, weather permitting.
“Lots of interesting science happens in the energy range that ComPair is designed to study,” said Nicholas Kirschner, a graduate student at George Washington University in Washington and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who works on the mission. “These gamma rays are hard to capture with existing methods, so we need to create and test new ones. ComPair's flight gets us one step closer to putting a similar detector in space.”
ComPair detects gamma rays with energies between 200,000 and 20 million electron volts. Visible light’s energy falls between 2 and 3 electron volts, for comparison.
Supernovae and powerful explosions called gamma-ray bursts shine the brightest in this energy range. It’s also where astronomers expect to see the strongest glow from the most massive and distant active galaxies, which are powered by monster black holes. Current missions don’t cover this range well, however, so future ComPair-inspired instruments could fill in important gaps in astronomers' knowledge.
Earth’s atmosphere filters out most of the high-energy radiation coming from space – which is good for humans but makes testing new gamma-ray technologies challenging. ComPair's solution is to fly to about 133,000 feet (40,000 meters) on a scientific balloon, which brings it above 99.5% of the atmosphere.
After building and testing ComPair at Goddard, the mission team shipped it to Fort Sumner. There, they unpacked, reassembled, and recalibrated the instrument.
ComPair will piggyback with another mission, called GRAPE (Gamma-Ray Polarimeter Experiment), led by the University of New Hampshire. After ComPair and GRAPE are on the gondola, the framework that will attach to the scientific balloon, the teams can prepare for launch.
ComPair gets its name from two methods it uses to study gamma rays: Compton scattering and pair production. In Compton scattering, light hits a particle, such as an electron, and transfers some energy to it. Pair production occurs when a gamma ray grazes the nucleus of an atom and converts into a pair of particles – an electron and its antimatter counterpart, a positron.
“Gamma rays are too high-energy for a traditional telescope to detect – the light flies right between the mirror’s atoms,” said Regina Caputo, ComPair project manager at Goddard. “Instead, our instrument uses layers of different kinds of elements and compounds stacked on top of each other. As gamma rays pass through the instrument, they interact with different layers depending on their energies.”
The instrument has four major components:
- A tracker containing 10 layers of silicon detectors that determines the position of incoming gamma rays.
- A high-resolution calorimeter made of cadmium, zinc, and telluride that precisely measures lower-energy Compton-scattered gamma rays and some converted into electron-positron pairs.
- A high-energy calorimeter made of cesium iodide that mostly measures electron-positron pairs as well as some Compton-scattered gamma rays.
- An anticoincidence detector that notes the entry of high-energy charged particles called cosmic rays.
“Cosmic rays are everywhere in the universe – large numbers collide with every part of Earth’s atmosphere every moment of every day. They also run into spacecraft, including gamma-ray missions” said Richard Woolf, a research physicist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington. “Because they’re charged, cosmic rays can trip gamma-ray detectors, including future ComPair-inspired ones. So, we need anticoincidence detectors to filter them out.”
ComPair is a collaboration among Goddard, NRL, Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, and Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico.
NASA’s scientific balloons offer frequent, low-cost access to near-space to conduct scientific investigations and technology maturation in fields such as astrophysics, heliophysics, and atmospheric research, as well as training for the next generation of leaders in engineering and science. To follow the missions in the 2023 Fort Sumner fall campaign, visit NASA’s Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility (CSBF) website for real-time updates of a balloon’s altitude and GPS location during flight.
NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia manages the agency’s scientific balloon flight program with 10 to 15 flights each year from launch sites worldwide. Peraton, which operates CSBF in Texas, provides mission planning, engineering services, and field operations for NASA’s scientific balloon program. The CSBF team has launched more than 1,700 scientific balloons over some 40 years of operations. NASA’s balloons are fabricated by Aerostar. The NASA Scientific Balloon Program is funded by the NASA Headquarters Science Mission Directorate Astrophysics Division.
NASA announces monthly themes to celebrate the Heliophysics Big Year
IMAGE: IN OCTOBER 2023, NASA IS LAUNCHING THE HELIOPHYSICS BIG YEAR – A GLOBAL CELEBRATION OF SOLAR SCIENCE AND THE SUN’S INFLUENCE ON EARTH, OUR SOLAR SYSTEM, AND BEYOND. view more
CREDIT: NASA
This October, NASA is launching the Heliophysics Big Year – a global celebration of solar science and the Sun’s influence on Earth and the entire solar system. Modeled after the “Big Year” concept from citizen scientists in the bird-watching community, the Heliophysics Big Year challenges everyone to get involved with fun Sun-related activities.
For each month from October 2023 to December 2024, the Heliophysics Big Year will celebrate under a theme, sharing opportunities to participate in many solar science events from watching eclipses to joining citizen science projects. During the Heliophysics Big Year, participation isn’t limited to science – NASA invites everyone to celebrate the Sun with activities including dance, fashion, sustainability, and more.
“We hope these themes will get everyone excited about participating in the Heliophysics Big Year, whether it’s watching an eclipse, creating art inspired by our Sun, or any of the many activities in between,” said Peg Luce, acting director of NASA’s Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
Here are the Heliophysics Big Year themes:
October 2023 – Annular Eclipse
The Heliophysics Big Year starts off with the Oct. 14, 2023, annular solar eclipse, which will pass over North America from the U.S. to Mexico. During an annular eclipse, the Moon is slightly too far away from Earth to completely block the Sun, creating a “ring of fire” effect in the sky.
November 2023 – Mission Fleet
This month will celebrate the NASA Heliophysics mission fleet including its newest member, the Atmospheric Waves Experiment (AWE), set to launch during the month.
December 2023 – Citizen Science
Citizen science has enabled many heliophysics discoveries, including new types of auroras. This month will explore ongoing citizen science projects in heliophysics.
January 2024 – The Sun Touches Everything
From agriculture to economics, the Sun touches all parts of our lives. This month delves into all the ways we’re influenced by the Sun.
February 2024 – Fashion
Is there Sun in your wardrobe? See how the Sun sheds light on the fashion week catwalks during this month’s theme.
March 2024 – Experiencing the Sun
The Sun may be 93 million miles away, but we can still experience it from home, whether its watching eclipses, auroras, or observing its daily influence on our lives.
April 2024 – Total Solar Eclipse
On April 8, 2024, a total solar eclipse will cross much of the central and eastern United States. This eclipse will provide viewers a chance to see the Sun’s outer atmosphere – the corona – and it will be the last total solar eclipse that can be seen from the contiguous U.S. until 2044.
May 2024 – Visual Art
The Sun has been depicted in art for thousands of years. This month looks at ways artists around the world are portraying the Sun, from graphic illustrations to street art to ceramics.
June 2024 – Performance Art
The Sun also shows up in music and dance – two areas that will be celebrated this month.
July 2024 – Physical and Mental Health
How many steps would it take to walk to the Sun? This month explores connections between the Sun and our physical and mental health from solar-inspired sports teams to Sun-themed meditations.
August 2024 – Back to School
To close out the summer, this month’s activities are designed specially for kids of all ages.
September 2024 – Environment and Sustainability
The Sun is a powerful source of energy. This month takes a look at how solar power works and how heliophysics missions use it to power their science.
October 2024 – Solar Cycle and Solar Max
The Sun’s 12-year activity cycle will be nearing its maximum point during this month, which will include activities to explore the solar cycle.
November 2024 – Bonus Science
The Heliophysics Big Year isn’t over yet, and this month will explore unexpected heliophysics discoveries and connections to other scientific divisions.
December 2024 – Parker’s Perihelion
This month, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe mission – the first spacecraft to “touch” the Sun – will make its closest approach to the Sun and close out the Heliophysics Big Year.
By Mara Johnson-Groh
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
No comments:
Post a Comment