Washington, Sept 17 (ANI): Space scientists are set to launch a balloon up to 130,000 feet with a one-ton instrument payload to measure gamma rays from the Crab Pulsar, the remains of a supernova explosion that lies 6,500 light years from Earth.
The launch, which is highly dependent on weather and wind conditions, will begin from September 18 at NASA's launch facility in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, and closes at the end of next week.
The Gamma Ray Polarimeter Experiment (GRAPE), which was designed and built at the Space Science Centre within the UNH Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space (EOS), is an effort to apply a new type of detector technology to the study of celestial gamma rays.
Specifically, the goal of the GRAPE project is to study the polarization of gamma rays from celestial sources.
Detecting gamma-ray polarization can provide astrophysicists with a better understanding of particle acceleration, a ubiquitous and important but poorly understood process that generates radiation and occurs throughout the universe - from Earth's magnetic field (magnetosphere) to pulsars and black holes.
But the New Mexico-based flight, which could last as long as 40 hours, is not designed to reach the ultimate goal of the project - to study gamma-ray bursts.However, lead scientist Mark McConnell noted that a successful, short-duration demonstration flight would provide the best measurements of the polarization of gamma rays emanating from the Crab Pulsar to date.
"To study the gamma-ray burst phenomena we need much more time because they occur randomly in the sky at a rate of about once per day and last at most a couple of minutes. So a long flight will be required to measure a number of bursts," said McConnell, a professor in the SSC and chair of the UNH department of physics. (ANI)
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