A NASA high-altitude balloon flight earlier this yr served as reminder of an ever-important lesson: At all times again up your information.
In April in Wānaka, New Zealand, researchers launched the Tremendous Strain Balloon Imaging Telescope, or SuperBIT, a balloon-based telescope, which aimed to assemble information on darkish matter distribution by imaging colliding galaxies. SuperBIT floated on the fringe of the environment for 40 days accumulating information earlier than it returned to Earth. Upon touchdown, nonetheless, the balloon was considerably broken. What saved the day was two information restoration programs (whose specs the researchers not too long ago printed) that earlier within the day had already parachuted all the way down to the Patagonia area of Argentina, rescuing greater than 200 gigabytes of SuperBIT observations.
“It’s like streaming Netflix down from the sting of area.”
—Richard Massey, Durham College
“For the entire parts on the periodic desk, there’s about six instances as a lot darkish matter,” says Richard Massey, a professor of physics at Durham College in Durham, U.Ok. Darkish matter’s solely results on seen matter, famously, can solely be noticed not directly by way of gravitational results. “It’s a bit like learning the wind,” Massey explains. “You may’t see the wind when you look outdoors, however you possibly can see leaves blowing round.”
SuperBIT launched from Wānaka, New Zealand, on 16 April 2023.Invoice Rodman/NASA
SuperBIT has educated its deal with galaxy clusters, the place tons of to hundreds of galaxies bunch collectively, generally colliding. “We’re utilizing SuperBIT to map the place the bits fly, so we will hopefully determine what this invisible stuff is,” Massey says.
Floor-based telescopes don’t have the decision the researchers wanted to carry out these observations, and present area telescopes—which obtain a lot larger decision by avoiding scattering from the environment—use both too slender or too huge a discipline of view. Dangling a telescope from a balloon greater than 30 kilometers up provided a perfect answer, attaining almost the identical decision as an area telescope at a fraction of the associated fee. “It sounds slightly bit loopy, but it surely works remarkably nicely,” says Ellen Sirks, a analysis affiliate on the College of Sydney in Australia. She started engaged on SuperBIT as a doctoral scholar of Massey.
Whereas telescopes like Hubble and the James Webb Area Telescope value billions of {dollars}, balloon telescopes could be launched “at a college price range,” Sirks says.
Raspberry Pi by parachute
Balloon-based telescopes current challenges too, resembling dependable information retrieval. Typically, these telescopes beam down information to floor stations or close by satellites. SuperBIT did so with SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, however the telescope gathered an excessive amount of information to be transmitted constantly for the whole flight.
“It’s like streaming Netflix down from the sting of area,” says Massey. With out a secure connection, that “streaming” was interrupted a number of instances throughout the flight and misplaced about two weeks into the mission. Fortunately, the staff had devised a bodily backup system, supplementing the satellite tv for pc connection and the telescope’s major arduous drives. The info have been copied onto the information restoration system and dropped from the sky.
“It form of hearkens again to the Sixties and spy satellites,” Massey says. As a substitute of scientific information on SD playing cards, these satellites dropped surveillance footage in movie cassettes.
The info retrieval system consists of components which might be “comparatively commonplace,” Sirks says. For the electronics, it makes use of a Raspberry Pi compact laptop together with an SD card with 5 terabytes of storage. The storage gadget is related to the telescope’s onboard laptop by way of ethernet to constantly switch the information, and it’s hooked up to the telescope with mechanical pincers utilized by skilled archers and chosen due to their capability to face up to excessive rigidity. “Generally, the best issues are the very best options,” Sirk says.
SuperBIT’s Information Restoration System makes use of a Raspberry Pi.Ellen Sirks
When the astronomers are able to launch the system, they ship a message to the Raspberry Pi to start the method. Thirty seconds later, it slides off the telescope and begins the descent. A parachute opens to gradual the autumn, and the Pi glides all the way down to Earth.
As a result of the balloon-based strategy is inexpensive than launching a telescope into orbit, the researchers have been in a position to iterate the design and enhance their information restoration system. So, whereas the fundamental design has been constant over the information restoration system’s growth, a few of the particulars have modified.
For instance, on a 2019 take a look at flight of SuperBIT and its information restoration, Massey and Sirks have been shocked to search out that the Raspberry Pi was overheating—regardless of the frigid surroundings. Within the higher environment, Massey explains, “it’s minus 60 levels [Celcius], however electronics simply are likely to overheat and minimize out.” The offender was quickly found: Followers are normally used to chill down these computer systems, however at that altitude, there may be hardly any air to move the warmth. Within the up to date model of the system, the researchers added a radiator system with a copper tube linking the pc to the encircling surroundings. That means, the pc may emit warmth out into area and preserve the system cool.
The info restoration system can also be a very good answer for flights—like SuperBIT’s—that spend a very long time over our bodies of water, says Andrew Hamilton, the appearing chief of NASA’s Balloon Program. In these flights, there’s a higher likelihood of shedding the telescope within the ocean, to allow them to’t depend on onboard arduous drives. Nonetheless, Hamilton says, the retrieval itself presents challenges: First, you need to get permission from the native air site visitors authority to drop the information capsules. Then, the researchers have to search out the place the capsules have landed.
Earlier than dropping two capsules carrying separate copies of the information, the SuperBIT staff coordinated with the Argentine police, who Massey and Sirks say have been a vital a part of the retrieval. The capsules landed in a distant space with tough terrain, and the researchers solely knew the approximate places; Sirks had developed software program to calculate the touchdown web site primarily based on climate circumstances, however robust crosswinds over the Andes and a defective battery meant they couldn’t observe the touchdown craft exactly.
One of many information restoration programs was additionally “inspected by the native wildlife” upon its touchdown, Massey says. A cougar discovered the gadget and dragged it away from the preliminary web site. Fortunately, the system wasn’t broken badly, and the information was protected.
SuperBIT’s flight earlier this yr, Hamilton says, was the primary time that the NASA Balloon Program had used the sort of information restoration system. Now, Hamilton says NASA is trying into different strategies of performing “information drops,” by way of packages together with the FLOATing DRAGON Problem, a contest is searching for prototypes of comparable gadgets from college college students.
Sirks and Massey additionally plan to enhance their design for future telescopes by fixing the issue that they had with the system’s battery throughout its descent. And, to maintain the system protected from wildlife after touchdown, Massey has an thought:
“Subsequent time,” he says, ”I assume we’ll should put one thing that smells a bit unhealthy onto it.”
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