The University of Colorado at Boulder signed a contract worth an estimated $92 million with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA to build a satellite instrument package to help forecast solar disturbances that affect communication and navigation operations in the United States.
The instrument package, which will be designed and built at CU-Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, is slated to launch on future generations of NOAA satellites known as the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites, or GOES-R. Known as the Extreme Ultra Violet and X-Ray Irradiance Sensors, or EXIS, the LASP package will consist of an X-ray sensor to look at solar flares and an extreme UV sensor to monitor sunlight variation, both of which can disrupt communications and navigational accuracy of equipment and vehicles operating on land, sea and in the air and space.
A team of about 30 LASP researchers and engineers and about a half-dozen students led by principal investigator and LASP Research Associate Frank Eparvier will design and build the instruments at the LASP Space Technology Building in the CU Research Park. The LASP contract calls for the delivery of the first instrument package in 2012 and options for three additional instrument packages to be delivered over the subsequent decade following the launch of GOES-R in December of 2014, said Eparvier.
"This is great news for LASP, the university and the state of Colorado," said Eparvier. "We believe we are the premier institution in the world for making these kind of solar measurements, and we are excited to get going on this project."
The GOES satellite is responsible for measurements leading to fast, accurate weather forecasts, search-and-rescue beacon detection, and the measurement of space weather phenomena that directly affect public health and safety in the United States, Eparvier said. GOES is a NOAA program that is implemented through NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
Extreme UV radiation from the sun is a primary energy source for the upper atmosphere, changing the environment in which low-Earth orbit satellites fly and affecting telecommunication and navigational systems, said Eparvier. "The new design for EXIS, based on decades of LASP experience, will provide improved measurements of extreme UV light for our nation's space operational needs."
The EXIS instrument package will be about the size of a large shoebox and will weigh about 50 pounds, said Eparvier.
CU-Boulder has a long history of operating instruments and satellites to measure solar radiation, said LASP Director Daniel Baker. A $100 million NASA satellite known as SORCE, designed and built by LASP and launched in 2003, continues to gather data and is controlled from the CU Research Park, said Baker.
"NASA and NOAA considered our long experience and expertise and approved our proposal to participate in this important national program," said Baker. "While this is our first foray in a long-term program with NOAA as the customer, we have an outstanding research group and I'm more than confident we will get the job done."
Baker said there undoubtedly will be involvement in the project in the coming years by CU-Boulder students. "LASP has proven to be a great training ground for future generations of scientists and engineers. Students are involved in virtually every aspect of what we do, from designing and building instruments and analyzing data to controlling satellites from campus."
Vice Chancellor for Research and Dean of the Graduate School Stein Sture said the award points out CU-Boulder's outstanding research innovation to solve pressing scientific challenges. "The issue of space weather has become very important to our society as technology advances," he said. "This award shows once again that LASP is at the nation's forefront in space sciences, and is a great reflection on the talent of our faculty."
Image courtesy NASA
Track Solar Storms Violent solar events, like flares and coronal mass ejections, are the hurricanes of space weather, capable of causing havoc with satellites, power grids, and radio communication, including the Global Positioning System. The sun is heading into a new season of turbulent solar activity. Just like its seasonal hurricane predictions, on April 25, 2007, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will issue an update on efforts to predict the sun’s next solar cycle. The solar cycle is about 11 years long and marked by increases in the number of Earth-impacting solar storms and sunspots, dark areas on the sun caused by the intense, unstable magnetic fields that power fierce solar weather.
Innovative Satellite System COSMIC data will also help scientists measure and predict the density of high-altitude electrons associated with damaging solar storms. The altitudes of peak electron density have been difficult to observe and predict, because forecast models have had limited data on the vertical distribution of electrons. "The many thousands of vertical profiles that COSMIC can provide each day on electron density will be extremely useful in correcting the space weather models and their predictions," says COSMIC chief scientist Christian Rocken.
Solar X-ray Imager SXI will observe solar flares, coronal mass ejections, coronal holes and active regions in the X-ray region of the electromagnetic spectrum from 6 to 60 A (Angstroms). These features are the dominant sources of disturbances in space weather that lead to, for example, geomagnetic storms. SXI will also examine flare properties, newly emerging active regions, and X-ray bright points on the Sun.
Space Weather, Strategies for Manned Missions to Mars Research published in the journal Space Weather warns that massive gaps in our understanding and monitoring of space weather will effectively block US plans for a manned mars space mission. The study, led by University of Warwick researcher Dr Claire Foullon, draws on work that Dr Foullon and colleagues carried out for the European Space Agency on radiation hazards and space weather.
Scientists and engineers have created and successfully tested a set of algorithms and software programs which are designed to enable the 19 individual mirrors comprising NASA's powerful James Webb Space Telescope to function as one very sensitive telescope.
NASA researchers will present findings on these algorithms and software programs, called the "Wavefront Sensing and Controls" at the Optics and Photonics meeting of the Society for Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) meeting. The SPIE meeting will be held at the San Diego Convention Center, 111 West Harbor Drive, San Diego, Calif., August 26-30. The session, called "TRL-6 for JWST Wavefront Sensing and Control" will be on Sunday, August 26 from 11:30 a.m. - 11:50 a.m. PDT, in room 29B, and is Paper 6687-7 of Conference 6687.
As August draws to an end, watchers of the night sky will be in for a treat. In the early morning hours of August 28, sky watchers across much of the world can look on as the Moon crosses in to the shadow of the Earth, becoming completely immersed for one-hour and 30 minutes, a period of time much longer than most typical lunar eclipses. In fact, this eclipse will be the deepest and longest in 7 years.
After nearly two weeks in space, the seven members of STS-118 returned to the astronaut crew quarters at Kennedy Space Center to unwind from their mission.
The five men and two women added a new segment to the International Space Station, delivered 5,800 pounds of supplies and equipment and teacher-turned-astronaut Barbara Morgan taught lessons from orbit during the mission. Space Shuttle Endeavour, meanwhile, is being prepared at Kennedy to move to the Orbiter Processing Facility.