NASA launched, on Tuesday (11), its newest space telescope, Spherex, designed to seek the main ingredients of life on the Milky Way, along with a sun-focused mission called Punch.
Both innovative missions promise to reveal aspects never before seen and unknown to our solar system and our galaxy. The launch was initially scheduled to take place last weekend, but was postponed by the agency.
Although they have totally different goals, launch Punch as a secondary load along with Spherex helps to put “more science in space at a lower cost,” says Nicky Fox, an associated administrator of NASA’s scientific mission board.
And it helps the fact that both missions are going to a similar place: a synchronous orbit in the sun around the Earth’s poles, which means that each spacecraft maintains the same orientation in relation to the sun throughout the year.
Spherex, or spectrophotometer for the history of the universe, a time of reion and ice explorer, aims to clarify how the universe has evolved and find out where the main ingredients of life originated in the cosmos.
Punch, or polarimeter to unify the crown and heliosphere, will study how the sun affects the solar system. The mission will observe the hot outer atmosphere of the sun called the crown, and will study the solar wind, that is, the energized particles that emerge in a constant flow of the sun.
“These missions cover the full breadth of science that NASA performs every day,” explains Mark Clampin, an interim associate administrator of NASA’s scientific mission board. “Punch… will study the sun in great detail, while Spherex is a survey mission that will scan the whole sky and watch hundreds of millions of stars. So every minute of the day, NASA’s scientific missions are exploring the universe at different scales to really help us understand the universe in which we live and understand the sun that keeps our planet alive. ”
The Star Components of Life
After the launch, Spherex will spend just over two years orbiting the land at 650 km of altitude, collecting data on over 450 million galaxies. The telescope will also research over 100 million stars in our galaxy.
Maping the distribution of galaxies will help scientists understand a cosmic phenomenon called inflation, that is, what made the universe increase in size in one trillion trillion times almost instantly after Big Bang.
The Observatory will create a map of the sky in 102 colors of infrared light, invisible to the human eye and ideal for studying stars and galaxies. The telescope will divide infrared light into different wavelengths, such as a prism. The different colors of light can help scientists identify the composition of celestial objects, isolating their chemical compounds.
“We are the first mission to look at the whole sky in so many colors,” says Jamie Bock, SPHEREX’s lead researcher at NASA jet propulsion lab and California Institute of Technology, both in Pasadena, California, in a statement. “Whenever astronomers look at the sky in a new way, we can expect discoveries.”
Spherex will also measure the total shine of light emitted by all galaxies, including those that are too distant and weak to be detected by other telescopes, providing a comprehensive view of all major sources of light in the universe.
One of Spherex’s main goals is to look for evidence of water, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and other life -essential ingredients that may be frozen gas and dust clouds that give rise to planets and stars.
In particular, astronomers are eager to look into molecular clouds, or giant gas and dust giant regions, which may contain newly graduated stars. These stars are likely to be surrounded by material discs, which form planets. Astronomers believe that ice connected to small dust grains is where most of the universe water can be found – and it is probably where the water that created the earth’s oceans originated.
Identifying the ingredients for life in our galaxy and their abundance will allow researchers to determine how they can be incorporated into newly graduated planets.
Spherex will act as a partner of the James Webb space telescope. While webb is a targeted telescope, which means it observes a small area, but in more detail, Spherex is a research telescope that observes large portions of the sky quickly. The combination of data from both telescopes can connect thin details with the general frame. If Spherex detects something of interest, the webb or the Hubble space telescope can zoom it.
How does Punch work?
Punch is a constellation of four small spacecraft the size of a suitcase that will spend the next two years rotating around the earth to observe the sun and heliosphere, the magnetic field bubble and sun particles that extends far beyond Pluto’s orbit.
Each satellite carries a camera that together acts as a single synchronized virtual instrument, offering a virtually uninterrupted view of the sun. Cameras have polarized filters, similar to polarized sunglasses, which allow you to create maps of solar crown characteristics and solar system.
Together, the four satellites will create 3D global observations from where the sun’s outer atmosphere transitions to become the solar wind to help scientists understand how this process occurs. Punch will also glimpse how the corona and solar wind affect the rest of the solar system. It will be the first mission to get images of the corona and the solar wind together.
Solar wind, like solar storms, are responsible for the spatial climate that can affect the earth, creating beautiful auroras near the poles, but also interfering with communication satellites and causing interruptions in energy grids. Punch -collected measurements will help scientists better understand how solar storms form and evolve, which can lead to accurate predictions when the space climate can impact the earth. The punch will observe the sun at a crucial time during solar maximum, or the peak of sun activity during its 11 -year cycle, when more eruptions and solar storms should occur.
“What we hope that Punch brings to humanity is the ability to really see, for the first time, where we live within the solar wind itself,” says Craig Deforest, Punch’s main researcher in the Southwest Research Institute’s Solar System Division in Boulder, Colorado, in a statement.
Like Spherex and Webb Telescope, Punch will be able to work together with NASA’s Solar Parker probe, which was launched in 2018 and recently made its ticket closer to the sun to capture a larger image as well as closer details.
“Punch is the latest addition of Heliophysics to the NASA fleet that provides innovative science every second of each day,” says Joe Westlake, director of NASA Heliophysics Division, in a statement. “Launching this mission as a travel sharing reinforces its value to the nation by optimizing each release capacity pound to maximize scientific return on the cost of a single release.”
*With information from Ashley Strickland, from CNN
Webb observes chaos around the central black hole of the Milky Way
This content was originally published in NASA launches missions to study sun and beginning of the universe and life on the CNN Brazil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
Charles Grill is a tech-savvy writer with over 3 years of experience in the field. He writes on a variety of technology-related topics and has a strong focus on the latest advancements in the industry. He is connected with several online news websites and is currently contributing to a technology-focused platform.
