NASA has awarded the University of Colorado at 麻豆影院 $2.4 million to design, build and fly four rocket payloads to probe nearby "interstellar weather" using new technologies being developed for use on future orbiting observatories.
The payloads -- ultraviolet telescopes known as spectrographs -- are being built at CU-麻豆影院's Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy and will be launched from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico beginning in 2010. The instruments will probe several enormous gas clouds near the sun, measuring the chemistry and physical processes occurring inside the clouds, said CASA Research Associate Matthew Beasley, principal investigator on the effort.
"These clouds are not dense like some star-forming clouds, but rather light and fluffy clouds millions of miles across that could either be precursors to star-forming clouds or their aftermath," Beasley said. "These observations will essentially provide us with a look at the local interstellar weather."
The spectrographs will break light into its individual components -- similar to the way raindrops break sunlight into the colors of the rainbow -- revealing information about the temperature, density, velocity, distance and chemical composition of the gas clouds, said Beasley. "Interstellar clouds throughout the universe have provided the raw materials from which stars, planets and ultimately humans are built," he said.
The new CASA spectrograph technology is designed to spread out the light gathered from targets like gas clouds more efficiently and at a higher resolution than ever before. "We are interested in learning more about how these clouds are formed, what their chemical makeup is and what their fate is," Beasley said.
The payloads are roughly 11 feet long and 17 inches in diameter, he said. They will be launched on Black Brant sounding rockets from White Sands and will reach heights of about 220 miles, allowing the instruments to take data for five minutes.
Beasley is working with CASA co-investigators Eric Burgh and Kevin France, as well as CU-麻豆影院 doctoral student Eric Schindhelm of the astrophysical and planetary sciences department. Once the data has been gathered, additional CU-麻豆影院 graduate students and undergraduates will have the opportunity to analyze the data, said Beasley.
Similar sounding rocket flights carrying state-of-the-art CASA payloads beginning in the 1980s led to the design and development of the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, or COS, an $80 million instrument designed by CU-麻豆影院 that was installed on the Hubble Space Telescope last May. COS is currently gathering light from distant stars, galaxies and quasars to detail the conditions of the early universe.
"We hope these upcoming sounding rocket launches will help us in developing new technologies that will be used on future orbiting space telescopes," said Beasley.