NASA will launch an artificial star into orbit
A first-of-its-kind NASA mission aims to place a new “star” in the sky by the end of the decade to help solve a wide range of the universe’s greatest mysteries, scientists have announced. This is Landolt’s recently announced space mission, which aims to launch a toaster-sized satellite that will imitate stars by shining lasers directly into ground-based telescopes. This will allow astronomers to fine-tune their instruments and potentially revolutionize the way they study the Universe.
The launch will occur in early 2029, explained Peter Plavchan, an astronomer at George Mason University in Virginia and the mission’s principal investigator. False star It will be located exactly 35,785 kilometers above the Earth’s surface.in accordance with statement researchers. This will place the satellite into a geosynchronous orbit around our planet, meaning its speed will match the Earth’s rotation, so it will appear to be fixed in place in the night sky.
Unfortunately, not all of us will be able to see a new star in the night sky. “It will be more than 100 times fainter to be seen by the human eye, but will be easily visible with medium-sized telescopes equipped with digital cameras,” Plavcan adds.
The project will likely involve a team of about 30 people, is estimated to cost around $19.5 million, and aims to help astronomers calculate the calibration of the absolute flux of distant stars. This flux is a measure of the number of light particles, or photons, that stars emit, and this measurement is currently difficult to determine accurately. This is partly because Atmospheric interference changes the light observed by ground-based telescopesbut also because there are no real reference points for calibrating the absolute flux other than the Sun.
Since researchers can control the photon output of their artificial satellite, the fake star will provide telescopes with a reliable reference for comparison with real stars. We hope this will help astronomers determine the star’s absolute carrying capacity to within about 0.25% of its true value, which is approximately 10 times more accurate than current estimates.
Space missions rarely use ground and orbital technologies linked in this way, Plavchum said. “This is the first modern example of It is considered a hybrid mission, requiring the use of both ground and space assets.working together to make measurements.”
The researchers believe that being able to more accurately measure the brightness and distance of stars will have enormous benefits in many areas of astronomy. For example, you could Help discover more exoplanets around alien starsdetermining the age of a star and how similar stars have evolved over time.
Another important goal of Landolt’s mission is to help scientists. study dark energy and accurately determine the expansion rate of the Universewhich is currently one of the biggest problems in cosmology.