Enlarge / Artist’s illustration of the COSI spacecraft.
A small analysis satellite tv for pc designed to review the violent processes behind the creation and destruction of chemical parts will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in 2027, NASA introduced Tuesday.
The Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI) mission includes a gamma-ray telescope that may scan the sky to review gamma-rays emitted by the explosions of large stars and the tip of their lives. These supernova explosions generate reactions that fuse new atomic nuclei, a course of known as nucleosynthesis, of heavier parts.
Utilizing information from COSI, scientists will map the place these parts are forming within the Milky Method galaxy. COSI’s observations will even yield new insights into the annihilation of positrons, the antimatter equal of electrons, which seem like originating from the middle of the galaxy. One other purpose for COSI will likely be to quickly report the situation of brief gamma-ray bursts, unimaginably violent explosions that flash after which fade in simply a few seconds. These bursts are seemingly attributable to merging neutron stars.
The COSI mission will likely be delicate to so-called comfortable gamma-rays, a comparatively unexplored section of the electromagnetic spectrum. The telescope is predicated on a design scientists have flown on analysis balloon flights.
NASA chosen COSI in a contest for funding to develop into the following mission within the company’s Explorers program in 2021. Earlier this yr, NASA formally accepted the mission to proceed into growth for launch in August 2027, with an total price range within the vary of $267 million to $294 million, in line with NASA price range paperwork.
From Florida to the equator
COSI is a comparatively small spacecraft, constructed by Northrop Grumman and weighing lower than a ton, however it is going to experience alone into orbit on high of a Falcon 9 rocket. That is as a result of COSI will function in an uncommon orbit about 340 miles (550 kilometers) over the equator, an orbit chosen to keep away from interference from radiation over the South Atlantic Anomaly, the area the place the inside Van Allen radiation belt comes closest to Earth’s floor.
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 will ship COSI straight into its operational orbit after taking off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, then will hearth its higher stage in a sideways maneuver to make a flip on the equator. One of these maneuver, known as a airplane change, takes loads of power, or delta-V, on par with the delta-V required to place a heavier satellite tv for pc right into a a lot larger orbit.
Enlarge / File picture of a Falcon 9 launch on Could 6 from Cape Canaveral House Power Station, Florida.SpaceX
NASA awarded SpaceX a firm-fixed-price contract valued at $69 million to launch the COSI mission. That is a couple of 37 % enhance within the value NASA paid SpaceX in a 2019 contract for launch of the equally sized IXPE X-ray telescope into an identical orbit as COSI. The upper value is no less than partially defined by inflation.
The area company did not have a lot of a choice to make within the COSI launch contract. The Falcon 9 is the one rocket licensed by NASA that has the flexibility to launch a satellite tv for pc with the mass of COSI into its equatorial orbit.
Within the subsequent couple of years, NASA hopes United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket and Blue Origin’s New Glenn launcher will likely be within the combine to compete for launch contracts for missions like COSI. All of ULA’s remaining Atlas V rocket are already booked by different prospects.