Space and the study of space are usually concerned with things that are quite big, like the telescopes used for observations, the large planets and galaxies and also sometimes a star going through a supernova. Although it does not stop there, one of the more visionary tools that astronomy will be utilizing is a mini satellite which is only as big as a shoebox.
The mini-satellite will have the ability to act like an artificial star and will be used by astronomers for observation from the ground below. This manoeuvre will allow the astronomers to accurately analyze the space object’s luminosity. But the bigger goal to achieve here is to unravel the biggest mysteries in our universe, like dark energy.
NASA has recently given the green light for the $19.5 million Landolt Space Mission, which will launch a mini satellite into orbit around Earth.
“This is some really awesome science that NASA is supporting,” Tyler Richey-Yowell, a postdoctoral researcher at Lowell Observatory who studies stellar astronomy and exoplanets, told Business Insider. “It’s something that’s going to help out all astronomers.”
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What Is CubeSat?
CubeSat the mini satellite is poised to orbit the earth from a distance of 35785.37 km or 22,235 miles. The purpose behind keeping this distance is that it will allow the satellite at its speed to align with the earth’s spin, and this way the satellite would appear to be stationary in the sky and it would make it easier for the telescopes on earth to track it down.
The bad news is that you won’t be able to see it with the naked eye, but it would appear like a star to the telescopes. The mission will take place in 2029 and it will be the first such mission with the new and revolutionary tool. The thing that makes this star better than a real star is that the astronomers will always have an exact tally of how much light is being emitted.
“This is really new for us to have some sort of artificial star quote unquote up there that we can go and rely on and use,” Richey-Yowell told BI.
The CubeSat, named in honour of the late astronomer Arlo Landolt, is set to deploy lasers emitting precise numbers of photons. This groundbreaking technology will revolutionize telescope calibration for astronomers, offering a reliable alternative to the current practice of using real stars, thereby enhancing measurement accuracy significantly.
The entire atmosphere takes in most of the light coming from our star and currently, there is no way to ascertain how much light exactly a real star is emitting and we can’t send a probe either to carry out the analysis.
Richey-Yowell expressed.
“That’s why this Landolt mission is so important,” Richey-Yowell said. “If we send up a mission like this one where we know exactly how many photons, how much light per second, is coming from this CubeSat,” then we can use it to compare and more precisely measure the light from other objects, like real stars, she said.
The mission holds special significance as it helps astronomers analyse the light emitted from stars with 10 times more precision than the current estimates. It would help them discover details they would have missed otherwise.
Why Study Light?
The study of light is a very essential step in human evolution and its quest for discovering the enigmas of the universe. If we speak in technical terms, a ray of light can help in understanding a lot of details about a star and its surroundings. Its temperature can be mapped, its mass, and what type of exoplanets revolve around it, and do they have potential life?
Richey-Yowell explained that understanding the temperature of a host star provides crucial information about the distance at which an exoplanet could potentially maintain liquid water on its surface. We know how important water is for sustaining life, and this is one of the key research areas for astrobiologists when searching for planets that could host potential life.
Discovering more Earth-like planets marks just the start. Astronomers can also utilize Landolt to measure light emissions from distant exploding stars, known as supernovae, which play a key role in calculating the universe’s expansion rate. Currently, cosmologists are in a great conundrum when it comes to the study of the universe’s expansion rate. There have been different results while utilizing a method and sometimes other methods lead to a different conclusion. There just isn’t any consensus on the universe’s expansion rate. These puzzles may be the key to unearthing the bigger mysteries of the universe like the knowledge of the invisible force ripping the universe apart commonly known as Dark Energy.
“So really anything from small, tiny planets to the whole scale of the universe relies on our understanding of stars and how bright they are and what kind of light they’re emitting,” Richey-Yowell said. “I really do think it will be revolutionary for astronomy.”
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