NASA launches special mission to study Earth’s mysterious “halo”
A few Nasa The missions are designed for very specific tasks, but all help fuel our understanding of our universe and, in some cases, our pale blue point works. A new mission to study one of the most esoteric parts of the atmosphere was successfully launched Wednesday, September 24, and over the next 2-3 years, will monitor the external parts of the atmosphere of our planet.
The Carruthers observatory Geocorona took off at 7:30 am Hae from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. He joined NASA Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) and the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) Space Weather suif-on Lagrange-1 (SWFO-L1) on a trip to the Lagrange L1 point between the Earth and the Sun.
We know it because, in April 1972, Apollo The astronauts put a primitive UV camera on the Highlands of Descartes on the Moon during their visit there. The images he produced from the Geocorona were absolutely superb, but the inventor of the camera, Dr George Carruthers, realized that this did not show the image. Even a camera as far as the moon could not capture the exosphere in its entirety.
It took more than 50 years, but his dreams of launching a mission to be able to capture this complete image will finally be achieved soon.
The new camera model is much more advanced than its original, representing 50 years of advancement in UV imaging. It will have both a wide field and an imagery in the near field. The first will take photos of the whole exosphere while the second will provide details on how it interacts both with the lower atmosphere and the particles of the sun.
This solar interaction is one of the most interesting parts of the mission, because it is one of the main methods by which the earth loses its hydrogen – one of the main components of water, which is essential to life as we know it. Understanding how this loss of hydrogen could help scientists reduce the search for potential exoplanets with sufficient amounts of water to be potentially habitable.
Once it reaches point L1 of the land, which is four times further than the moon, and 1.6 million kilometers closer to the sun than the earth, the Carruthers observatory Geocorona will start its sequence in service. It should start to take data in March of next year and has a planned operating lifespan of two years, however, if everything goes well, it could be considerably extended. Watch our pale blue point shining your brightest, in this case, will help us understand Other pale blue dots dispersed in the galaxy better. But, perhaps the most important, he will realize the dream of a pioneering engineer and physicist who died in 2020 at the age of 81.
THE original version of this article was published on Universe today. It has been slightly changed for precision.
