A first-of-its-kind NASA mission aims to put a new “star” in the sky by the end of the decade to help solve a wide range of the universe’s biggest mysteries, scientists have announced.
NASA’s Landolt space mission aims to send an artificial star satellite into Earth orbit “in early 2029.” Petr Plavchanastronomer at George Mason University in Virginia and principal investigator of the Landolt mission, told Live Science in an email.
The satellite will be “the size of a proverbial breadbox” and will be equipped with eight lasers that will allow it to mimic almost any type of star or supernova from around the universe when viewed by ground-based telescopes, Plavchan added. This will help astronomers improve the way they study real versions of these objects.
The false star will be located exactly 22,236 miles (35,785 kilometers) above Earth’s surface. statement by the researchers. This will put 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. For the first year of the mission, scientists plan to have that fixed point somewhere over the U.S., Plavcham said.
But this does not mean that everyone will be able to see a new star in the night sky. “It will be more than 100 times too faint to be seen by the human eye, but it will be easily visible to medium-sized telescopes equipped with digital cameras,” Plavchan said.
The new mission is named after the late Arlo Landolt, which helped create extensive catalogs of star luminosities. NASA officially gave the mission the green light in February, Plavchan said, but it wasn’t announced to the public until June 10.
The project will likely have a team of about 30 people and is estimated to cost around $19.5 million, Plavcham said.
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Landolt’s main goal is to help astronomers calculate the absolute flux calibration of distant stars. It is a measurement of the speed of light particles, or photons, emitted by stars, which is currently difficult to determine precisely. This is partly because atmospheric interference changes the light seen by ground-based telescopes, but also because there are no real reference points for absolute flux calibration, except sun.
Since the researchers can control the photon output of their artificial satellite, the fake star will provide telescopes with a reliable reference point to compare with real stars. This should hopefully help astronomers pinpoint the star’s absolute flux capacity to about 0.25% of its true value, about 10 times more accurate than current estimates.
Four ground-based telescopes have been dedicated to focusing on the artificial star: George Mason University’s 0.8-meter (2.6 ft) telescope, the UH88 telescope at Mauna Kea observatories in Hawaii, the Hale telescope at Palomar Observatory in California, and the upcoming Vera. The C.Rubin Observatory, currently under construction in Chile, is scheduled to begin scanning the sky next year.
It’s rare for a space mission to involve surface and orbital technologies linked in this way, Plavcham said. “This is the first modern example of what is believed to be a hybrid mission that requires the use of both ground and space-based instruments that work together to make measurements.”
Scientists believe that the ability to more precisely measure the brightness and distance of stars will bring huge benefits to various fields of astronomy. For example, it could help reveal more exoplanets around alien stars while determining how old the star is and how similar ones have evolved over time.
Another major goal of Landolt’s mission is to help researchers study dark energy and an accurate determination of the rate of expansion of the universe at present one of the greatest problems of cosmology.