A bus-sized telescope with an X-ray field of view took off into space in Japan on Thursday morning.
It wasn’t alone. A robotic lunar lander, about the size of a small food truck, also accompanied them. Two missions, XRISM and SLIM, will soon part ways, with one setting off to scout some of the hottest spots in the universe and the other a massive mission by Japanese space agency JAXA. It set out to help test technology that will be used on the Moon. Future landing.
The launch from the coast of Tanegashima in the southern part of the Japanese archipelago was picturesque, with the sight of Japan’s H-IIA rocket soaring over the distant launch site and disappearing into the blue sky without clouds. Approximately 14 minutes after liftoff, the XRISM telescope separated from the rocket in orbit while the SLIM spacecraft continued its journey toward its first destination in space.
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of X-ray imaging and spectroscopy missions β XRISM for short (and pronounced like βcrismβ) β is the launchβs main passenger. From an orbit 350 miles above Earth, XRISM explores exotic environments that emit X-ray radiation, such as accreting matter swirling around black holes, swelling plasma seeping into galaxy clusters, and the remains of exploding massive stars. I plan to research it.
Data from the telescope reveals the movement and chemistry of these cosmic places using a technique called spectroscopy. Spectroscopy extracts information about a light source’s composition based on changes in its brightness at different wavelengths. This technology will allow scientists to observe some of the highest energy phenomena in the universe, further enhancing astronomers’ comprehensive multiwavelength picture of the universe.
XRISM’s spectroscopy will “reveal the flow of energy between objects at different scales” with unprecedented resolution, Makoto Tashiro, the telescope’s principal investigator and a JAXA astrophysicist, wrote in an email. Ta.
Japan’s space agency is leading the mission in cooperation with NASA. Because the European Space Agency contributed to the construction of the telescope, European astronomers will be allocated a portion of the telescope’s observation time.
XRISM is a reconstruction of the JAXA spacecraft “Hitomi” mission, which was launched in 2016. The Hitomi telescope went out of control a few weeks into its mission, and Japan lost contact with the spacecraft.
“It was a devastating loss,” said Brian J. Williams, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center who was part of the Hitomi team and is now the XRISM project scientist. The small amount of data collected from Hitomi was an interesting demonstration of what such a mission could offer.
βWe realized we had to build this mission again, because this is the future of X-ray astronomy,β Dr. Williams said.
Unlike other wavelengths of light, cosmic X-rays can only be detected from above Earth’s atmosphere, which protects us from harmful radiation. XRISM joins a number of other X-ray telescopes already in orbit. NASA’s Chandra X-ray ObservatoryNASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, launched in 1999, joined in 2021.
What sets XRISM apart from these missions is a tool called Resolve. The tool must be cooled to just above absolute zero so that it can measure tiny temperature changes when X-rays hit a surface. The mission team expects Resolve’s spectroscopic data to be 30 times sharper than the resolution of Chandra’s instruments.
Lia Corrales, an astronomer at the University of Michigan who was selected as a participating scientist on the mission, sees XRISM as a “pioneering tool” that represents “the next step in X-ray observations.” Dr. Corrales will use cutting-edge spectroscopy to analyze the composition of interstellar dust, gaining insight into the chemical evolution of the universe.
Jan-Uwe Ness, an astronomer at the European Space Agency who manages the proposal selection process within Europe’s allotted observing time, says the excellent quality of data collected with XRISM’s spectroscopy is similar to that of an extreme environment. He said it might feel like visiting.
“We’re looking forward to the spectral revolution,” he said, adding that even more ambitious X-ray telescopes will be ready in the future.
XRISM also includes a second instrument named Xtend that works simultaneously with Resolve. While Resolve zooms in, Xtend zooms out, giving scientists a complementary view of the same X-ray source over a larger area. According to Dr. Williams, Xtend is less powerful than the imager on the older Chandra telescope. Some of the most impressive views of the X-ray universe up to now. But Xtend photographs the universe at a resolution comparable to how we would perceive it if we had her X-ray vision.
Once XRISM reaches low Earth orbit, researchers will spend the next few months powering up the instrument and running performance tests. Scientific activities will begin in January, but initial research from the data could take more than a year, Dr. Tashiro said. Ahead of his discovery, he was just excited to see the instrument in action, saying, “Once it’s up and running, we’re definitely going to see a new world of X-ray astronomy.” added.
Most of all, Dr. Williams is looking forward to the “untapped unknowns” that XRISM may unearth. “Every time we announce a new capability, we discover something new about the universe,” he said. “How is this going to turn out? I don’t know, but I’m looking forward to finding out.”
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The Smart Lunar Survey Lander (SLIM) is the next robotic spacecraft heading to the moon, but it may not be the next one to land.
SLIM would require less propellant and would make a long, circuitous journey lasting at least four months. The lander will take several months to reach lunar orbit, then spend a month circling the moon before attempting to land on the moon’s surface near Scioli Crater.
That means two U.S. spacecraft, by Astrobotic Technologies of Pittsburgh and Intuitive Machines of Houston, could launch later this year and take more direct trajectories to the moon, with slim This means that there is a possibility that it could be broken and reach the moon’s surface.
Although SLIM carries a camera that can determine the composition of rocks around the landing site, the mission’s primary purpose is not scientific. Rather, it is to demonstrate a pinpoint navigation system that aims to reach within approximately the length of a soccer field of a target location.
Currently, the lunar module can attempt to land within a few miles of its chosen landing site. For example, the landing zone of India’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, which made the first successful landing on the Moon’s south pole last month, was 11 miles wide and 34 miles long.
JAXA said in a press kit that the processing power of space-enhanced computer chips is only about 1/100th that of the highest-quality chips used on Earth, so the vision-based technology installed on many landers is He said the system has limitations.
For SLIM, JAXA has developed image processing algorithms that can run quickly even on slow space chips. As SLIM approaches landing, cameras will guide the spacecraft’s descent to the lunar surface. Radar and lasers measure the spacecraft’s altitude and rate of descent.
Due to the risk of crashes in current systems, lunar landers are typically directed towards flatter, less interesting terrain. More accurate navigation systems will allow future spacecraft to land near rugged terrain of scientific interest, such as craters containing frozen water near the Moon’s south pole.
At launch, SLIM weighs over 1,500 pounds. More than two-thirds of the weight is propellant. By comparison, India’s lunar lander and its small rover weighed about 3,800 pounds, and the accompanying propulsion module that pushes them out of Earth’s orbit toward the moon weighed an additional 4,700 pounds.