Latest news with #RALSpace
Yahoo
24-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Oxfordshire plays ‘crucial role' in NASA mission heading to Sun this week
Teams in Oxfordshire have played a crucial role in a pioneering NASA mission launching this week. While space weather is usually harmless – producing the beautiful displays of the Northern and Southern Lights – severe solar storms can interfere with aspects of everyday life including GPS systems, power grids, and vital global communications on Earth. Scientists continue to develop our understanding of solar phenomena so we can enhance our resilience to their potential impacts. A new NASA mission featuring UK-built technology is targeted to launch early morning (GMT) on February 28, 2025, (February 27 Pacific time) from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, USA. READ MORE: New Italian restaurant opens in Oxfordshire A constellation of four small satellites in low Earth orbit that will make global, 3D observations of the entire inner heliosphere to learn how the Sun's corona becomes the solar wind. (Image: NASA) This is to explore how the Sun's outer atmosphere (the solar wind) evolves as it expands outwards from the corona into the heliosphere, a vast bubble of charged particles that stretches far beyond Pluto's orbit. Selected by NASA from five proposals in 2019, the Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission will use four spacecraft to build 3D maps of the solar wind structure and contribute to efforts to improve space weather forecasting. Led by the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in the US, the PUNCH consortium brings together world-leading expertise, including from UK-based teams at the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). Scientists, engineers and technicians at STFC's RAL Space near Didcot, Oxfordshire have been instrumental in the development of the four suitcase-sized PUNCH satellites. READ MORE: Police say teenage boys hurled stones at Didcot house NASA are heading the mission. (Image: PA) As well as contributing to the mission's scientific goals, RAL Space teams have designed, developed, and manufactured the systems for four visible-light cameras that will capture a new perspective of the evolving solar wind. Once the spacecraft are in orbit, the team at RAL Space will also enact their role as the mission's in-flight calibration lead. Maximum science return from the mission relies on the combination of data from its four satellites, so ensuring accurate calibration is paramount. Dr Jackie Davies, UK Science Lead for PUNCH at STFC RAL Space, said: 'The PUNCH design builds on RAL Space's extensive heritage in leading and contributing to, solar and solar wind imaging instruments, including our contributions to NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) mission. 'We're thrilled to be working alongside SwRI, NASA and the US Naval Research Laboratory on this pioneering project and can't wait to see what new insights our technological and scientific input will reveal in the coming months.' READ MORE: Oxfordshire pub to hold 12-day beer festival with 20 ales 🚨 New flash sale offer! 🚨 Subscribe to the Oxford Mail online for just £5 for five months in this new offer 🗞️ A subscription gives you unlimited access to our website, fewer ads, e-editions of the newspaper and much more 👍 Find out more here 👇 — Oxford Mail (@TheOxfordMail) February 6, 2025 Dr Nick Waltham, Technology Research and Innovation Theme Lead at RAL Space said: 'Developing and testing the PUNCH camera systems has been an exciting endeavour for our team, made even more meaningful by the additional challenges we overcame during the COVID pandemic. 'This achievement is the result of years of dedication – building on a much longer heritage in similar missions – and the whole team should be incredibly proud as we prepare for launch. 'Their work will play a key role in advancing our understanding of this crucial area of space science.'
BBC News
24-02-2025
- Science
- BBC News
Nasa solar satellite cameras developed by UK company
A "pioneering" Nasa mission using satellites partly developed by UK scientists is set to launch later this American space agency mission will observe the Sun's outer atmosphere - the corona - to learn how the mass and energy there become the solar suitcase-sized spacecraft will be used to build 3D maps of the corona, as part of attempts to improve space weather camera systems installed on the spacecraft were developed by RAL Space, based in Harwell, Oxfordshire. Solar wind is usually harmless, and is responsible for producing the Northern and Southern Lights severe solar storms can interfere with aspects of everyday life including GPS systems, power grids, and vital global communications on Earth. The Nasa mission aims to explore how solar wind evolves as it expands outwards from the the Sun's atmosphere into the wider solar hoped that by capturing images of the Sun's corona and the solar wind together, scientists will be able to better understand a region of space known as the inner region is effectively a vast magnetic bubble that surrounds the Sun that is formed by the solar wind. As part of the operation, scientists, engineers and technicians from RAL Space have developed four specialised cameras that the company said would "capture a new perspective of the evolving solar wind".Once the spacecraft are in orbit, RAL Space will also be responsible for making sure the equipment on the satellites can provide accurate measurements back to Earth. Dr Jackie Davies, from RAL Space, said the latest mission built on the company's "extensive heritage in leading, and contributing to, solar and solar wind imaging instruments".He said the company was "thrilled" to be working alongside Nasa and over US based teams on the "pioneering" added that he "can't wait to see what new insights our technological and scientific input will reveal in the coming months".Nasa's Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission is set to launch in the early hours of Friday, UK four ten-and-a-half stone (67kg) satellites will orbit the Earth for the duration of the mission, which is expected to last two years. You can follow BBC Oxfordshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
