USU space lab part of NASA project
The orange horizon line over Salt Lake City is a good indication that humans are filling the air with particles. But with expensive satellites and the millions of 21st-century necessities that depend on them at stake, the government needs access to a more intricate picture of the condition of our atmosphere and how it’s affected by not only human activity, but also energy from the sun and other elements.
Scientists have a good understanding of most of the atmosphere. Balloons and airplanes can collect data in the lower parts, and satellites can collect data in the highest parts. But the Thermosphere, Ionosphere and Mesosphere – which together form the gateway between Earth’s environment and space – are still a mystery.
“They sometimes refer to it as the ‘ignore-osphere,'” said Lorin Zollinger, program manager at the Utah State University Space Dynamics Lab, “because it’s a part of the atmosphere no one’s studied.”
No one’s studied it because it wasn’t possible with existing technology. Satellites couldn’t see far enough down and balloons couldn’t see far enough up, he said.
But in February, NASA will launch a satellite called TIMED, an acronym for Thermosphere, Ionosphere, Mesosphere, Energetics and Dynamics. The satellite contains four instruments, each of which will gather different kinds of information to create a complete picture of the middle layers of the atmosphere – completing our understanding of the atmosphere as a whole.
One of NASA’s major goals is to find out what’s happening with the chemicals in the atmosphere, specifically exactly how high levels of carbon dioxide – the gas that results from natural emissions, fossil-fuel burning for industrial processes like heating and electrical power generation – are affecting the region. This is where the USU Space Dynamics Lab comes into the picture.
The chemicals that make up the atmosphere emit infrared light. Given the task of detecting this light from more than 1,500 kilometers away, the Space Dynamics Lab, which specializes in infrared sensing, created SABER (Sounding of the Atmosphere using Broadband Emission Radiometry), a telescope powerful enough that the infrared sensor inside can see what no infrared sensor has seen before.
Every time SDL tackles a project, it begins with nothing but a concept.
“These are all one-of-a-kind, first-time-you’ve-done-it kinds of things,” said Paul Huber, director of technical support for the project.
Creating the concept takes more than 400 scientists, engineers and machinists and a lot of time.
The SABER took six years from being a concept to being space-ready.
“It would be easy if you could say, well, this is a telescope and these are the lenses it needs,” Zollinger said. “But you’re dealing with space, so it’s a little more complicated.”
Example: Parts of the telescope must be completely cold, or the infrared sensors will pick up on the heat and the readings will be ruined. So the telescope has to be calibrated – every single part set to a certain temperature – and then refrigerated while in orbit.
The instruments have to be tested in an environmental testing lab, where they’re put through different machines simulating the conditions during launch and in space. Every instrument has to be structurally sound enough to make it through the jarring launch into space, lightweight enough to stay in orbit and able to withstand extreme temperatures.
About 120 USU undergraduates and graduates work in the SDL in all different areas, from engineering, where the instruments are designed and tested, to the fully-equipped machine shop, where parts for the instruments are created and fine-tuned.