NASA’s CURIE mission is dedicated to investigating the source of solar radio waves using a novel kind of space-based radio interferometry. The NASA mission is expected to deploy two orbiting CubeSats around Earth to gather radio data so as to nail the exact source of emissions flared and coronal mass ejection events.
It was on 9 July 2024 that NASA’s small space mission, the CubeSat Radio Interferometry Experiment, took off to study the mysterious and yet unresolved origins of radio waves sticking out from the Sun.
The radio waves were detected many decades ago by scientists. Solar flares and giant eruptions on the Sun have since been pinpointed as the source of the radio waves, also known as coronal mass ejections, or CMEs — one of the major drivers of space weather that can disrupt satellite communications and technology at Earth. But no one knows where the radio waves come from inside a CME.
First Launch of Ariane 6 Rocket
Technological Innovation in Space
The CURIE mission proposes to improve our understanding using a technique called low frequency radio interferometry, never used before in space. The scheme relies on dual independent CURIE spacecraft, jointly no larger than a shoebox, which will orbit the Earth around two miles apart. This allows the instruments of CURIE to measure very small differences in the arrival time of radio waves and enables it to pinpoint exactly where the radio waves came from.
“This is a very ambitious and very exciting mission,” says Principal Investigator David Sundkvist, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. “This is the first time somebody’s ever flown a radio interferometer in space in a controlled way, and so it’s a pathfinder for radio astronomy in general.”
CURIE Team Members Work
Mission Details and Launch
The spacecraft designed by the UC Berkeley team will measure radio waves ranging 0.1-19 megahertz in order to pinpoint the solar origin of the radio waves. These wavelengths get blocked by the Earth’s upper atmosphere, so this can be done only from space.
CURIE was launched aboard an ESA European Space Agency Ariane 6 rocket on 9 July from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana. It placed the instrument 360 miles above Earth’s surface, where it got a clear view of the Sun’s radio waves.
Once in circular orbit, the two adjoined CURIE spacecraft will acquire ground stations, then orient and separate. After separation, once the satellites are in formation, dual eight-foot antennas on the separated satellites will deploy, and data collection will commence.
CURIE is sponsored by NASA’s Heliophysics Flight Opportunities for Research and Technology, or H-FORT, Program and is the only mission manifested on the NASA CubeSat Launch Initiative’s ELaNa, or Educational Launch of Nanosatellites, 43 mission. As designed, this pathfinder mission is a proof of concept for space-based radio interferometry in the CubeSat form factor. This will also lead to the future Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment mission, or SunRISE. SunRISE will create 2-D maps of the region from which the solar radio waves emanate, using six CubeSats.
The NASA CURIE mission ushers in a new era of discovery in understanding solar radio emissions. CURIE will pinpoint the exact sources of these radio waves, which serve as critical indicators for both solar activity flares and CMEs from nearly decades-long observations. In this way, these phenomena—responsible for critical hazards to satellites and communications systems on Earth—attain paramount importance for advancing our understanding of space weather.
The innovation in the mission comes in the launching of two CubeSats, both carrying radio interferometry instruments. These two satellites will orbit Earth at about two miles apart. Then, using the configuration, they will collect the measurements in terms of the arrival time of radio waves to very high degrees of precision. Scientists want to be able to pinpoint the exact places within CMEs from where the radio waves come and have an understanding of the physics involved.
Principal Investigator David Sundkvist of the University of California, Berkeley, attempts to set the record straight on the novelty of CURIE: “This is literally the first attempt at space-based radio interferometry; in this sense, it will enable new capabilities in radio astronomy beyond what is currently possible using conventional ground-based observations.”.
CURIE will launch on 9 July 2024, riding an ESA Ariane 6 rocket from the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana. It will be positioned 360 miles high to get an unobstructed view of the Sun and able to pick up radio waves in the 0.1 to 19 megahertz range. These frequencies get blocked by Earth’s atmosphere, so they need to be observed from space if scientists want to study them properly.
Right after launch, CURIE will contact the ground stations, signaling that it has started deploying its antennas. These antennas are critical in gathering data once satellites achieve an operational formation. That formally starts the main mission for CURIE as it begins to relay to Earth valuable data related to solar radio emissions.
Apart from the strictly scientific objectives, CURIE is a forerunner mission that lays the groundwork for other missions similar to the Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment, which will be capable of 2-D mapping of solar radio emission origins with six CubeSats, allowing insight into the dynamics of the sun and its effects upon space weather.
The success of NASA’s CURIE mission thus opens up a new frontier for space-based radio interferometry, totally redefining current knowledge about solar radio emissions. This has been a very long time coming, and such is the technological innovation that could uncover mysteries behind radio waves from solar flares and coronal mass ejections. While magnificent events to observe, these phenomena are extremely dangerous for our technological infrastructure on Earth, so studying them is very important.
This mission by CURIE encompasses technological innovation and allows an opportunity to answer a few very basic questions related to solar physics. The origin of solar radio waves has been a continued question over the past several decades, as it is truly related to the explosive events that take place on the solar surface. Hugely energetic and massive emissions into space have been the result of solar flares and coronal mass ejections, culminating in space-weather phenomena, which even from space may interfere with satellite operations or cause disturbances in power grids on Earth.
Source: https://scitechdaily.com/
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