The Tarantula Nebula taken by the Tremendous Stress Balloon Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT). Credit score: NASA/SuperBIT
And the restoration journey involving a smashed telescope, a cougar scare, and police.
Information from a NASA mission to map darkish matter round galaxy clusters has been saved by a brand new restoration system designed by scientists on the College of Sydney. The system allowed the retrieval of gigabytes of knowledge, even after communication failed and the balloon-based telescope was broken within the touchdown course of.
Mission Overview
In April, the Tremendous Stress Balloon Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT) was launched from Wānaka Airport, New Zealand, suspended underneath a helium-filled balloon the dimensions of a sports activities stadium on prime of the Earth’s ambiance, and floated around the globe 5.5 instances. Sadly, it was broken on touchdown in southern Argentina the next month.
An excellent strain balloon partially inflated because it’s being ready to launch from Wānaka, New Zealand on April 16, 2023, with the SuperBIT payload. Credit: NASA/Invoice Rodman
Information Restoration Success
Individually, two Information Restoration System packages storing greater than 200 gigabytes of SuperBIT’s data descended by parachute and landed safely, together with a map of dark matter round galaxies and gorgeous images of house. Darkish matter is an invisible substance that has a mass six instances higher than common matter within the universe.
Research Particulars and System Design
A examine led by Dr. Ellen Sirks from the College of Sydney’s Faculty of Physics, printed in the present day within the journal Aerospace, gives directions to construct the Information Restoration System she designed, and recounts the mission that demonstrated, for a comparatively small value, scientists can guarantee the data they collect may be salvaged within the worst-case situation.
Inner view of the Information Restoration System. Credit score: Sirks et al.
System Significance and First Use
The authors of the examine, comprised of a workforce of worldwide scientists from Australia, the UK, the US, Canada, Europe, and Taiwan, stated that the primary use of the Information Restoration System capsules throughout a stay science mission proved an enormous success.
“Our telescope bought to the purpose the place it was utterly destroyed, and we misplaced excessive bandwidth communications, so not solely did the Information Restoration System work; it was actually fairly important to the mission’s success,” Dr. Sirks stated.
“If you’re dropping one thing from the sky, in our case from 33 kilometers, there’s at all times an opportunity that one thing goes improper, so restoration packages are fairly important to maintain your knowledge secure.
“This drop bundle is one thing we’ve been creating for about 5 years, however solely now have we been capable of take a look at it in its last configuration. It’s bought to the purpose the place NASA needs to begin producing these packages for different science missions as nicely, so this was actually our last take a look at to point out that this technique works.”
PhD candidate Ajay Gill from the College of Toronto (left) and Dr Ellen Sirks from the College of Sydney (proper) engaged on a Information Restoration System bundle. Credit score: Steve Benton
System Elements and Restoration Course of
Dr. Sirks stated Information Restoration Methods are comprised of small computer systems with SD playing cards to retailer the information, a home-made “discover my telephone” satellite tv for pc hyperlink, and parachutes – housed in foam enclosures utilizing on a regular basis objects resembling rooster roasting baggage to maintain them waterproof.
The story of recovering the packages itself was a mission. Dr. Sirks stated the native police within the Argentinian countryside helped retrieve the packages, given the tough terrain the place they landed.
“We couldn’t discover one at first and once we did, there have been cougar tracks within the snow close to it, so we thought possibly the rooster roast bag was not the most effective thought. It was fairly humorous. However we did retrieve them fairly simply,” Dr. Sirks stated.
Information Retrieval Strategies in Balloon Missions
In a typical balloon-based mission like NASA’s, knowledge is downloaded by satellite tv for pc, however Dr. Sirks stated scientists usually want line-of-sight communication to obtain the information shortly, which isn’t at all times environment friendly or doable.
Balloon-based observations additionally present the standard of house telescopes at a fraction of the finances – thousands and thousands of {dollars} in comparison with billions.
“In our case, we had been getting a lot knowledge per evening that it will simply be extremely sluggish and costly to retrieve this knowledge mid-flight,” Dr. Sirks stated.
“In the meanwhile, essentially the most environment friendly method for us to obtain knowledge is to repeat it onto an SD drive and simply drop it to Earth which is sort of loopy, however it works nicely.”
Reference: “Information Downloaded through Parachute from a NASA Tremendous-Stress Balloon” by Ellen L. Sirks, Richard Massey, Ajay S. Gill, Jason Anderson, Steven J. Benton, Anthony M. Brown, Paul Clark, Joshua English, Spencer W. Everett, Aurelien A. Fraisse, Hugo Franco, John W. Hartley, David Harvey, Bradley Holder, Andrew Hunter, Eric M. Huff, Andrew Hynous, Mathilde Jauzac, William C. Jones, Nikky Joyce, Duncan Kennedy, David Lagattuta, Jason S.-Y. Leung, Lun Li, Stephen Lishman, Thuy Vy T. Luu, Jacqueline E. McCleary, Johanna M. Nagy, C. Barth Netterfield, Emaad Paracha, Robert Purcaru, Susan F. Redmond, Jason D. Rhodes, Andrew Robertson, L. Javier Romualdez, Sarah Roth, Robert Salter, Jürgen Schmoll, Mohamed M. Shaaban, Roger Smith, Russell Smith, Sut Ieng Tam and Georgios N. Vassilakis, 13 November 2023, Aerospace.
DOI: 10.3390/aerospace10110960
