A unique NASA mission aims to place a new ‘star’ in the sky by the end of this decade to help solve many of the universe’s greatest mysteries, scientists have announced.
The Landolt NASA Space Mission aims to send an artificial stellar satellite into orbit by “early 2029.” Peter Plavchanan astronomer at George Mason University in Virginia and the principal investigator of the Landolt mission, told LiveScience in an email.
The satellite will be “about the size of a proverbial lunch box” and will be equipped with eight lasers that will allow it to mimic virtually any type of star or supernova from across the cosmos as seen through ground-based telescopes, Plavchan added. This will help astronomers improve the way they study the real versions of these objects.
The fake star will be placed exactly 22,236 miles (35,785 kilometers) above the Earth’s surface, according to a study. statement from researchers. This puts the satellite in a geosynchronous orbit around our planet, meaning its speed matches the Earth’s rotation so it appears to be in place in the night sky. For the first year of the mission, researchers plan for this fixed point to be somewhere over the U.S., Plavcham said.
But that doesn’t mean everyone will be able to see the new star in the night sky. “It will be more than 100 times too faint to see with the human eye, but it will be easy to see for average-sized telescopes equipped with digital cameras,” Plavchan said.
The new mission is named after the late Arlo Landolt, who has helped create extensive star brightness catalogs. NASA officially gave the mission the green light in February, Plavchan said, but this was not announced to the public until June 10.
The project will likely have a team of about 30 people and is estimated to cost about $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. This is the measurement of the speed at which light particles, or photons, are emitted by stars, which is currently difficult to determine accurately. 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, apart from the sun.
Because researchers can monitor the photon output of their artificial satellite, the fake star will provide a reliable reference point for telescopes to compare with real stars. This should hopefully help astronomers determine a star’s absolute flux capacity to within about 0.25% of its true value, which is about 10 times more accurate than current estimates.
Four ground-based telescopes are dedicated to focusing on the artificial star: the 0.8-meter telescope at George Mason University, the UH88 telescope at the Mauna Kea Observatories in Hawaii, the Hale telescope at the Palomar Observatory in California and the upcoming Vera telescope. C.Rubin Observatory, which is currently under construction in Chile and will begin scanning the sky next year.
It’s rare for a space mission to connect surface and orbital technologies in this way, Plavcham said. “This is the first modern example of what is considered a hybrid mission using ground and space facilities working together to make measurements.”
Researchers believe that being able to more accurately measure the brightness and distance of stars will bring enormous benefits to several areas of astronomy. For example, it could help detect more exoplanets around alien stars, while also determining how old a star is and how other similar stars have evolved over time.
Another important goal of the Landolt mission is to help researchers study dark energy and accurately determine the rate at which the universe is expanding, which is currently the case one of the biggest problems of cosmology.