• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

NASA Will Soon Launch An Artificial Star Into Orbit Over The USA

July 23, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

When you look up at the 200 billion trillion (ish) stars, you probably don’t think about adding another – but NASA aims to launch an artificial “star” over the USA before the end of the decade.

Advertisement

From Earth, stars appear to have variable brightness based on a number of factors, including how distant they are, what type of star they are, and what stage those stars are at in their life cycles. Getting very precise measurements of these parameters can help us figure out, for example, how fast the universe is expanding by looking at how far away they are, and how much the light has become redshifted on its journey to us.

For these sorts of projects, you need to know very precisely how bright a star is, and this is where having an artificial star comes in handy. The Landolt mission – named for astronomer Arlo Landolt – will provide one for us when it launches in 2029, as it places a calibrated light source into orbit at a distance of 35,785 kilometers (22,236 miles) from the Earth. 

“The goal is to be able to figure out, for other planets orbiting other stars, whether they too could have oceans where life could presumably arise and live,” Jamie Tayar, assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Florida,  explained in a statement. “For each star, you need to know exactly how much energy is coming from the star, and exactly how far away the planet is, and so on.”



The artificial star, really a CubeSat, will be in a synchronized orbit over the US during its first year. The idea is that the “star” will send send a known emission rate of photons back to telescopes on Earth. Here, astronomers will observe the artificial star next to the space object they are interested in, allowing them to assess its brightness.

Advertisement

“The Landolt mission will allow us to re-calibrate the brightnesses of millions of stars,” Peter Plavchan, Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy at George Mason University, explained in a paper on the project. “Such measurements can only be achieved by a space-based orbiting artificial star, where the physical photon flux is accurately known. Consequently, Landolt will enable the refinement of dark energy parameters, improve our ability to assess the habitability of terrestrial worlds, and advance fundamental constraints on stellar evolution.”

It is hoped that the mission could help identify habitable zones around stars, with the ultimate goal of finding another planet harboring life.

“There are so many big questions in astronomy: How did we get here? Are there other planets like ours? Do aliens exist?” Tayar added. “But those are really hard questions, and so to answer them the measurements have to be really good, and they have to be right.”

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Soccer-Italy equal European unbeaten record in draw with Bulgaria
  2. Clubhouse hires a head of news from NPR to build out publisher relationships
  3. Only 1 Percent Of Chemicals Have Been Discovered – How Can We Find The Rest?
  4. Free Bella: Activists Urge To Release Captive Beluga From Mega Mall In South Korea

Source Link: NASA Will Soon Launch An Artificial Star Into Orbit Over The USA

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Why Is The Top Of Canada So Sparsely Populated? Meet The “Canadian Shield”
  • Humans Are In The Middle Of “A Great Evolutionary Transition”, New Paper Claims
  • Why Do Some Toilets Have Two Flush Buttons?
  • 130-Year-Old Butter Additive Discovered In Danish Basement Contains Bacteria From The 1890s
  • Prehistoric Humans Made Necklaces From Marine Mollusk Fossils 20,000 Years Ago
  • Zond 5: In 1968 Two Soviet Steppe Tortoises Beat Humans To Orbiting Around The Moon
  • Why Cats Adapted This Defense Mechanism From Snakes
  • Mother Orca Seen Carrying Dead Calf Once Again On Washington Coast
  • A Busy Spider Season Is Brewing: Why This Fall Could See A Boom Of Arachnid Activity
  • What Alternatives Are There To The Big Bang Model?
  • Magnetic Flip Seen Around First Photographed Black Hole Pushes “Models To The Limit”
  • Something Out Of Nothing: New Approach Mimics Matter Creation Using Superfluid Helium
  • Surströmming: Why Sweden’s Stinky Fermented Fish Smells So Bad (But People Still Eat It)
  • First-Ever Recording Of Black Hole Recoil Captured During Merger – And You Can Listen To It
  • The Moon Is Moving Away From Earth At A Rate Of About 3.8 Centimeters Per Year. Will It Ever Drift Apart?
  • As Solar Storm Hits Earth NASA Finds “The Sun Is Slowly Waking Up”
  • Plate Tectonics And CO2 On Planets Suggest Alien Civilizations “Are Probably Pretty Rare”
  • How To Watch The “Awkward” Partial Solar Eclipse This Weekend
  • World’s Oldest Pots: 20,000-Year-Old Vessels May Have Been Used For Cooking Clams Or Brewing Beer
  • “The Body Is Slowly And Continuously Heated”: 14,000-Year-Old Smoked Mummies Are World’s Oldest
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version