A NASA high-altitude balloon flight earlier this yr served as reminder of an ever-important lesson: At all times again up your information.
In April in Wānaka, New Zealand, researchers launched the Super Pressure Balloon Imaging Telescope, or SuperBIT, a balloon-based telescope, which aimed to collect information on darkish matter distribution by imaging colliding galaxies. SuperBIT floated on the fringe of the environment for 40 days amassing information earlier than it returned to Earth. Upon touchdown, nonetheless, the balloon was considerably broken. What saved the day was two information restoration programs (whose specs the researchers recently published) that earlier within the day had already parachuted all the way down to the Patagonia area of Argentina, rescuing greater than 200 gigabytes of SuperBIT observations.
“It’s like streaming Netflix down from the sting of house.”
—Richard Massey, Durham College
“For all the components on the periodic desk, there’s about six instances as a lot darkish matter,” says Richard Massey, a professor of physics at Durham University in Durham, U.Okay. Darkish matter’s solely results on seen matter, famously, can solely be noticed not directly by means of gravitational results. “It’s a bit like finding out the wind,” Massey explains. “You may’t see the wind when you look outdoors, however you possibly can see leaves blowing round.”
SuperBIT launched from Wānaka, New Zealand, on 16 April 2023.Invoice Rodman/NASA
SuperBIT has skilled its deal with galaxy clusters, the place a whole lot to hundreds of galaxies bunch collectively, generally colliding. “We’re utilizing SuperBIT to map the place the bits fly, so we will hopefully work out what this invisible stuff is,” Massey says.
Floor-based telescopes don’t have the decision the researchers wanted to carry out these observations, and current house telescopes—which obtain a lot greater decision by avoiding scattering from the environment—use both too slim or too vast a area of view. Dangling a telescope from a balloon greater than 30 kilometers up supplied a really perfect answer, reaching practically the identical decision as an area telescope at a fraction of the associated fee. “It sounds just a little bit loopy, but it surely works remarkably nicely,” says Ellen Sirks, a analysis affiliate on the College of Sydney in Australia. She started engaged on SuperBIT as a doctoral pupil of Massey.
Whereas telescopes like Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope price billions of {dollars}, balloon telescopes could be launched “at a college funds,” Sirks says.
Raspberry Pi by parachute
Balloon-based telescopes current challenges too, comparable to dependable information retrieval. Typically, these telescopes beam down information to floor stations or close by satellites. SuperBIT did so with SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, however the telescope gathered an excessive amount of information to be transmitted repeatedly for your complete flight.
“It’s like streaming Netflix down from the sting of house,” says Massey. And not using a steady connection, that “streaming” was interrupted a number of instances through the flight and misplaced about two weeks into the mission. Fortunately, the group had devised a bodily backup system, supplementing the satellite tv for pc connection and the telescope’s major onerous drives. The info had been copied onto the info restoration system and dropped from the sky.
“It form of hearkens again to the Sixties and spy satellites,” Massey says. As an alternative of scientific information on SD playing cards, those satellites dropped surveillance footage in movie cassettes.
The info retrieval system consists of elements which are “comparatively commonplace,” Sirks says. For the electronics, it makes use of a Raspberry Pi compact pc together with an SD card with 5 terabytes of storage. The storage machine is linked to the telescope’s onboard pc through ethernet to repeatedly switch the info, and it’s connected to the telescope with mechanical pincers utilized by skilled archers and chosen due to their capability to face up to excessive pressure. “Generally, the best issues are one of the best options,” Sirk says.
SuperBIT’s Information Restoration System makes use of a Raspberry Pi.Ellen Sirks
When the astronomers are able to launch the system, they ship a message to the Raspberry Pi to start the method. Thirty seconds later, it slides off the telescope and begins the descent. A parachute opens to sluggish the autumn, and the Pi glides all the way down to Earth.
As a result of the balloon-based method is inexpensive than launching a telescope into orbit, the researchers had been capable of iterate the design and enhance their information restoration system. So, whereas the essential design has been constant over the info restoration system’s growth, a number of the particulars have modified.
For instance, on a 2019 take a look at flight of SuperBIT and its data recovery, Massey and Sirks had been shocked to search out that the Raspberry Pi was overheating—regardless of the frigid surroundings. Within the higher environment, Massey explains, “it’s minus 60 levels [Celcius], however electronics simply are inclined to overheat and minimize out.” The wrongdoer was quickly found: Followers are often used to chill down these computer systems, however at that altitude, there’s hardly any air to move the warmth. Within the up to date model of the system, the researchers added a radiator system with a copper tube linking the pc to the encompassing surroundings. That method, the pc might emit warmth out into house and hold the system cool.
The info restoration system can be answer for flights—like SuperBIT’s—that spend a very long time over our bodies of water, says Andrew Hamilton, the appearing chief of NASA’s Balloon Program. In these flights, there’s a larger probability of shedding the telescope within the ocean, to allow them to’t depend on onboard onerous drives. Nevertheless, Hamilton says, the retrieval itself presents challenges: First, you need to get permission from the native air site visitors authority to drop the info capsules. Then, the researchers have to search out the place the capsules have landed.
Earlier than dropping two capsules carrying separate copies of the info, the SuperBIT group coordinated with the Argentine police, who Massey and Sirks say had been a vital a part of the retrieval. The capsules landed in a distant space with tough terrain, and the researchers solely knew the approximate places; Sirks had developed software program to calculate the touchdown web site based mostly on climate circumstances, however sturdy crosswinds over the Andes and a defective battery meant they couldn’t monitor the touchdown craft exactly.
One of many information restoration programs was additionally “inspected by the native wildlife” upon its touchdown, Massey says. A cougar discovered the machine and dragged it away from the preliminary web site. Fortunately, the system wasn’t broken badly, and the info was secure.
SuperBIT’s flight earlier this yr, Hamilton says, was the primary time that the NASA Balloon Program had used any such information restoration system. Now, Hamilton says NASA is wanting into different strategies of performing “information drops,” by means of applications together with the FLOATing DRAGON Problem, a contest is looking for prototypes of comparable gadgets from college college students.
Sirks and Massey additionally plan to enhance their design for future telescopes by fixing the issue that they had with the system’s battery throughout its descent. And, to maintain the system secure from wildlife after touchdown, Massey has an concept:
“Subsequent time,” he says, ”I assume we’ll need to put one thing that smells a bit dangerous onto it.”
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