NASA has reported that its new cubesat meant to hunt down the brightest and most
destructive cosmic explosions has registered its first mega burst. This mega burst, quite literally a huge release of gamma rays, has left the scientists of the world captured in an image of awe for the beauty of mother nature!
BurstCube, launched last month to monitor Gamma Ray Bursts or GRBs, detected a
“mega blast” from a faint southern constellation called Microscopium. 29 June, this explosion occurred and in less than 2 seconds, outshone the sun by a billion fold, said NASA.
In the statement, Sean Semper, lead engineer for BurstCube at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said, “We’re excited to collect science data”. This is a significant achievement for the team and many early career engineers and scientists who have worked on the mission."
BurstCube is specifically designed to look for “short” gamma-ray bursts lasting no more than two seconds which offers invaluable insights into the life cycles of massive stars nearing their ends, as well as the creation of black holes.
Short gamma ray bursts (GRB) usually result from collisions between neutron stars left behind after the supernova explosions of large stars, which are superdense remnants;or binary systems composed of two such objects orbiting around a common center of mass.
Transient events like these emit gravitational waves that can be detected by special devices in addition to visible light radiation observed from long distances away;thus allowing astronomers studying such phenomena learn more about what can be taught by only visible light.
Such extreme astrophysical processes also produce some precious metals including gold and platinum among others along with some ingredients suitable for life like iodine and thorium
In a shocking turn of events, GRBs were originally discovered by the US military by
accident in 1963, when it sent up satellites to look for gamma rays from banned nuclear
weapon tests. However, even after studying these phenomena for more than 50 years,
the precise reason for the natural occurrence of these mind boggling, yet fleeting sights of amazingly bright lights continue to puzzle scientists.
In order to identify brief GRBs from its perspective in Earth orbit, BurstCube is fitted with four circular gamma-ray detectors arrayed to provide a wide area view of the sky for the satellite and help scientists determine the direction of an event.
According to the mission description, a gamma ray hitting any of the detectors is then converted to visible
light and subsequently several pulses of electrons are produced.
BurstCube was one of four small satellites launched into low Earth orbit from the
International Space Station back in April. Shortly afterwards, the mission team
discovered that one of the two solar panels did not fully deploy thereby obscuring its
star tracker’s line-of-sight which is used by satellites to orient itself reducing
atmospheric drag.
As a result, the satellite is anticipated to suffer increased drag in September and
eventually fall back into earth's atmosphere thereby reducing its original twelve to
eighteen month mission to just six months.
According to NASA’s public statement, Jeremy Perkins who is the principal investigator said,"I'm proud of how the team responded to the situation and is making the best use of the time we have in orbit" "Small missions like BurstCube not only provide an opportunity to do great science and test new technologies, like our mission's gamma-ray detector, but also important learning opportunities for the up-and-coming members of the astrophysics community."
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