Astronauts slated for restore mission on house station’s NICER telescope
by Clarence Oxford
Los Angeles CA (SPX) Apr 18, 2024
NASA has scheduled a spacewalk to restore the Neutron star Inside Composition Explorer (NICER), an X-ray telescope aboard the Worldwide House Station, later this yr. This marks the fourth occasion of astronauts servicing a science observatory in orbit.
In Might 2023, the NICER workforce recognized a big issue-a mild leak permitting daylight to penetrate and have an effect on the telescope’s delicate detectors. Rapid measures had been taken to attenuate observational disruptions, and plans for a extra everlasting repair started to unfold.
“Daylight considerably hampers NICER’s capability to collect essential X-ray knowledge through the station’s daytime cycles,” defined Zaven Arzoumanian, the science lead at NASA’s Goddard House Flight Heart. He added, “Though nighttime operations stay unaffected, and the telescope continues to assist sturdy scientific analysis, sealing off the sunshine ingress will restore our around-the-clock operational functionality.”
Arzoumanian detailed these corrective measures at a current presentation on the Excessive Vitality Astrophysics Division assembly of the American Astronomical Society in Texas.
Located close to the station’s inside starboard photo voltaic panels, NICER’s strategic placement permits it to survey the X-ray universe. The observatory’s focus contains phenomena like neutron stars and black holes, enhancing our understanding of cosmic matter and gravity. Moreover, since 2017, NICER has supported the SEXTANT venture, which exams the feasibility of utilizing neutron stars as navigational aids in deep house exploration.
The telescope contains 56 aluminum X-ray concentrators, every geared up with a set of mirrors designed to channel X-rays right into a detector. A thermal defend prevents daylight from coming into, whereas a sunshade atop the concentrators helps preserve operational temperatures. The noticed mild leak, attributable to minor harm to some shields, stays underneath investigation for its origins.
Keith Gendreau, NICER’s principal investigator, remarked, “Initially, NICER wasn’t supposed for in-mission servicing. It was put in by way of robotic means and is operated from the bottom. Growing a restore technique introduced a novel problem. After intensive deliberation, we opted for a spacewalk over a robotic restore, using present instruments on the house station.”
NASA’s restore technique entails inserting pie-shaped patches into the sunshades over the broken areas. These wedges, designed to be appropriate with a typical T-handle software out there to astronauts, intention to offer a simple but efficient resolution.
Steve Kenyon, the mission’s mechanical lead, emphasised, “Whereas the mechanical design of the patches is comparatively easy, the execution of repairs in house entails complicated procedures. We have performed intensive testing to make sure the restore’s effectiveness and security for each the astronauts and the station.”
The mandatory restore parts are set to be despatched to the house station on Northrop Grumman’s upcoming twenty first business resupply mission. The spacewalk to put in these patches will likely be a part of a sequence of duties deliberate for that expedition.
As a part of NASA’s Explorers Program, NICER is an Astrophysics Mission of Alternative, aiming to facilitate fast scientific research from house. It additionally works in live performance with JAXA’s MAXI experiment, permitting fast commentary of celestial occasions, thus broadening our scientific horizons.
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