Two NASA missions were eventually launched from the California coast, surged towards the stars late Tuesday night, overcoming a week's delay in orbit. Both aim to unravel the mysteries about the universe. One is a peer as the other approaches the house, one is far from the earth.
The main passenger on the rocket is the Spherex. This is a space telescope that captures images of the entire sky of over 100 colors that cannot be seen by the human eye. Attached to the telescope is a suite of satellites, collectively known as punches, which study the atmosphere and solar wind outside the sun.
The launch was postponed several times from late February as mission specialists perform additional checks on the SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket and NASA spacecraft. The dark weather also contributed to the scrubbed launch on Monday night. However, as it had been forgotten on Tuesday, Spherex and Punch were lifted from a Space Force base in Vandenburg against the black spread of the California sky at 11:11:11pm.
After about two minutes, the rocket's reusable booster was separated from the upper stage and turned towards Earth for a controlled landing near the launch site.
42 minutes after its release, the Spherex was floating from the top of the rocket. The four punch satellites released in pairs followed after about ten minutes. Both mission teams await signal from Earth Terminators, spacecraft that circumnavigate the lines above the Arctic and Antarctic, day and night. This type of orbit is known as solar synchronization because it directs the spacecraft in the same position compared to our Sun.
That's an advantage for both spacecraft. Punches always have a clear view of the sun, but Spherex remains away from it, avoiding light from home stars that could smash the signals from distant stars and galaxies.
Space Chart
Spherex stands for the history of the universe, the age of reionization, and Ice Explorer's spectrophotometer. The name of the bite matches the vastness of its goal. It involves examining the entire sky with 102 colors or wavelengths of infrared rays.
“It's really the first of its kind,” said Olivier Dore, a cosmologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and mission project scientist. In contrast, NASA's Square Infrared Survey Explorer, who retired in 2011, mapped the sky with just four colors of infrared.
Scientists use Spherex data to investigate how the total light emitted from galaxies has changed over space time, charting where frozen water and other essential components of life exist in the Milky Way.
“The oceans on Earth are thought to have originated from these interstellar ice reservoirs,” said James Bock, a California Institute of Technology cosmologist and lead researcher for the mission.
Three-dimensional maps that create uneven masses of galaxies throughout today's universe are thicker with galactic gas and dust, and others more sparse, which help physicists learn more about inflation.
According to Dr. Bock, small irregularities appeared as material that spread throughout the early universe. But inflation “blew them down to the scale of the universe,” he said, and those traces of irregularity are preserved in the inclusive structure of the universe today.
Physicists have long used measurements of the cosmic microwave background (light remaining from the Big Bang) to study inflation. However, galaxy investigations allow them to understand the physical processes that drive their extreme expansion.
“This is an idea that exists, but this is the first experiment we have designed to look for,” Dr. Bock said.
Looks like a giant megaphone, Spherex records around 600 images every day for over two years, capturing light from millions of stars in the backyard of space, bringing even more galaxies.
Using a technique called spectroscopy, telescopes separate light into different wavelengths. Glass prisms divide the white light into rainbows of color. The color spectrum of objects in space reveals information about their chemical composition and distance from the Earth.
At the end of the run, Spherex samples the entire sky four times. “There are spectra of all kinds of celestial bodies, including planets, stars, comets, asteroids, galaxies,” Dr. Dore said. “And every time we look at the sky in a different way, we discover a new phenomenon.”
Track the solar wind
According to Craig DeForest, a heliophysist at the South West Research Institute, hot plasma that cleans everything in our solar system, including us, is washing away everything in our solar system, including us. It's the solar wind.
“We're not separated from the stars,” he said. “We're soaked in it.”
Dr. DeForest is the lead researcher at Punch, shortening the polarizer to unify the coronavirus and the Heliosphere. The data obtained through punches unravel the boundary where the sun ends and the solar wind begins. The two-year mission will also help you predict the potential impact of space weather from blackouts to the glowing aurora.
Many solar missions focus on observing the atmosphere outside the sun, known as corona. “It's like studying human biology using only an electron microscope,” Dr. DeForest said. It's great for looking at cells and bad for learning about anatomy.
The punch is designed to measure both the coronavirus and the wide coco of solar power. The mission consists of four 140 pound satellites each of the size of a suitcase.
One satellite has a coronagraph, which takes photos of the sun's corona. The other three are equipped with cameras that capture a wider view of the solar breeze to leave Corona and penetrate the solar system.
Each satellite has three polarizing filters, during which only waves of light arranged in a particular direction can pass. This is similar to how polarized sunglasses block glare. By measuring polarization, scientists can reconstruct the position, velocity and direction of the corona in three dimensions.
They can also head to Earth and track the evolution of coronal mass emissions, the violent explosion of solar materials as they head to induce the weather in space.
Joseph Westlake, director of NASA's Heliophysics, compared the data Punch collects after being thrown by a pitcher. Dr. Westlake explained that everything until the ball leaves his hand is captured by missions like the NASA Parker Solar Probe and the Solar Dynamics Observatory.
“But it's a punch to actually see the ball go from the hand to the home plate,” Dr. Westlake said. “It takes what we see in the sun and connects it to what we experience on earth.”
