First Satellite In Space

UNH has long history in space exploration

DURHAM — For the first time, scientists are getting a better understanding of the boundary that surrounds our solar system.

Through the use of the IBEX (Interstellar Boundary Explorer), scientists are now gaining a better understanding of the barrier that surrounds the solar system and separates it from intergalactic space.

Researchers at the University of New Hampshire are playing a significant role in the satellite's mission.

The satellite, launched in October 2008, is making the first map of the boundary between the solar system and interstellar space, known as the heliosphere. The heliosphere is defined by the slowing of solar winds from supersonic to subsonic speeds as they collide with the interstellar medium.

The "cameras" are responsible for creating those images are in part the result of work by researchers at UNH's Space Science Center.

Eberhard Möbius, professor of physics and leader of IBEX hardware development at the university, said the images of the boundary are created by measuring the location and number of charge-exchange collisions between atomic particles. These particles can travel hundreds of astronomical units — a single astronomical unit is the distance between the Earth and Sun — without meeting much resistance until reaching the heliospheric boundary, where a charge-exchange collision can take place between ions from the solar wind and neutral atoms from the interstellar medium.

"It's exciting stuff that nobody has done before," he said.

What is particularly exciting, explains Möbius, is a narrow J-shaped ribbon of Energetic Neutral Atoms found in the image of IBEX's first mapping that was previously unpredicted.

While there are various theories as to the cause of the presence of these atoms, scientists now generally agree that the previous theory of our solar system as a giant, comet-shaped entity hurtling through the interstellar medium is wrong.

The IBEX project is among several space science research projects involving instrument design and data analysis taking place at the university's Space Science Center.

Space science is in the university's blood. Long before the first rocket was launched, UNH was invested in space exploration beginning in 1952 with the commission of neutron monitoring atop Mt. Washington.

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Today’s space cadets will … point to the private ventures of people like Elon Musk in America and Sir Richard Branson in Britain, who hope to make human space flight commercially viable. Indeed, the enterprise of such people might do just that. But the market seems small and vulnerable. One part, space tourism, is a luxury service that is, in any case, unlikely to go beyond low-Earth orbit at best (the cost of getting even as far as the moon would reduce the number of potential clients to a handful). The other source of revenue is ferrying astronauts to the benighted International Space Station (ISS), surely the biggest waste of money, at $100 billion and counting, that has ever been built in the name of science. The reason for that second objective is also the reason for thinking 2011 might, in the history books of the future, be seen as the year when the space cadets’ dream finally died. It marks the end of America’s space-shuttle programme, whose last mission is planned to launch on July 8th ( see article ). The shuttle was supposed to be a reusable truck that would make the business of putting people into orbit quotidian. Instead, it has been nothing but trouble. Twice, it has killed its crew. If it had been seen as the experimental vehicle it actually is, that would not have been a particular cause for concern; test pilots are killed all the time. But the pretence was maintained that the shuttle was a workaday craft. The technical term used by NASA, “Space Transportation System”, says it all. But the shuttle is now over. The ISS is due to be de-orbited, in the inelegant jargon of the field, in 2020. Once that happens, the game will be up. There is no appetite to return to the moon, let alone push on to Mars, El Dorado of space exploration. The technology could be there, but the passion has gone—at least in the traditional spacefaring powers, America and Russia. Given the broad shape of history and economic realities, I think the Economist is more likely to be right than wrong, at least in my lifetime. I doubt I’ll see human beings again leave earth orbit. And with the Shuttle, a certain boyhood hope will die: of understanding God’s universe beyond this little speck where 6.8 billion of us live today. I guess there’s always retreating to the imaginary worlds of exotic space travel — of Clarke and Heinlein, or Roddenberry and Lucas.

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