CubeSat Launched To Study Mysteries In Origin Of Solar Radio Waves

BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT/PARIS (dpa-AFX) - NASA launched a satellite to investigate the unresolved origins of radio waves coming from the Sun.

European Space Agency's Ariane 6 rocket, carrying CubeSat Radio Interferometry Experiment, or CURIE, launched from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, in French Guiana.

The rocket will take CURIE to 360 miles above Earth's surface, where it can get a clear view of the Sun's radio waves.

It is expected to establish ground communications next week, according to NASA.

Designed by a team from the University of California, Berkeley, CURIE will use radio interferometry to study the primary drivers of space weather.

NASA's Launch Services Program, in collaboration with ESA, designated CURIE as one of eleven payloads supplied by space agencies, commercial companies, and universities for the first flight of ESA's Ariane 6 rocket.

Scientists first noticed solar radio waves decades ago, and determined that they come from solar flares and giant eruptions on the Sun called coronal mass ejections. These are key drivers of space weather that can impact satellite communications and technology at Earth. But no one knows where the radio waves originate within a CME.

The CURIE mission uses a technique called low frequency radio interferometry, which has never been used in space before. This technique relies on CURIE's two independent spacecraft - together no bigger than a shoebox - that will orbit Earth about two miles apart. This separation allows CURIE's instruments to measure tiny differences in the arrival time of radio waves, which enables them to determine exactly where the radio waves came from.

'This is a very ambitious and very exciting mission,' said Principal Investigator David Sundkvist, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. 'This is the first time that someone is ever flying a radio interferometer in space in a controlled way, and so it's a pathfinder for radio astronomy in general.'

Copyright(c) 2024 RTTNews.com. All Rights Reserved

Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX