NASA is preparing for another mission in space that will bring humanity closer to the mystery of the Universe. On 30 March at Washington, NASA announced that their next project would contain six CubeSats that will be sent to space to fly together above geostationary orbit and bring valuable information regarding the solar storms.
They are planning on launching this mission before July 2023. The cost of the cluster of six CubeSats will be around 62.6 million USD, and the name of the experiment is Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment (SunRISE).
SunRISE will have a group of six CubeSats situated above geostationary orbit, each of the satellites is having six units in size. The six devices will be positioned 10 kilometers away from each other in order to form a virtual radio telescope. Their goal is to detect emissions similar to solar storms and store them. It would be impossible to detect these emissions from Earth because of the interference if the ionosphere.
NASA’s SunRISE will study solar storms
The purpose of this research is to determine the link between the solar storm and the possible consequences it might have on our planet. Researchers are stating that for them, merely seeing the start of a solar flare is not enough to determine whether those high energy particles will eventually reach the Earth or not.
In addition to this discovery, the researchers will be able to determine which events will cause high-energy particles and which will cause hazardous space weather activity on our planet. It will work as an alarm for the solar storms that are coming directly to Earth.
SunRISE’s system will be built from scratch by Maxar. In addition to the six CubeSats, the system will include the Payload Orbital Delivery System that will release the spacecraft in the orbit once they reach the desired point.