Dark Matter Data Saved Via Parachute

A NASA high-altitude balloon flight earlier this yr served as reminder of an ever-important lesson: All the time again up your knowledge.

In April in Wānaka, New Zealand, researchers launched the Super Pressure Balloon Imaging Telescope, or SuperBIT, a balloon-based telescope, which aimed to collect knowledge on darkish matter distribution by imaging colliding galaxies. SuperBIT floated on the fringe of the environment for 40 days accumulating knowledge earlier than it returned to Earth. Upon touchdown, nevertheless, the balloon was considerably broken. What saved the day was two knowledge restoration techniques (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 area.”
—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.Ok. Darkish matter’s solely results on seen matter, famously, can solely be noticed not directly via gravitational results. “It’s a bit like finding out the wind,” Massey explains. “You possibly can’t see the wind in the event you look outdoors, however you’ll be able to 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 tons of to hundreds of galaxies bunch collectively, generally colliding. “We’re utilizing SuperBIT to map the place the bits fly, so we are able to hopefully determine what this invisible stuff is,” Massey says.

Floor-based telescopes don’t have the decision the researchers wanted to carry out these observations, and present area telescopes—which obtain a lot larger decision by avoiding scattering from the environment—use both too slender or too huge a subject of view. Dangling a telescope from a balloon greater than 30 kilometers up supplied a perfect resolution, reaching almost the identical decision as an area telescope at a fraction of the associated fee. “It sounds a little bit bit loopy, however it works remarkably effectively,” 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 value billions of {dollars}, balloon telescopes may be launched “at a college price range,” Sirks says.

Raspberry Pi by parachute

Balloon-based telescopes current challenges too, akin to dependable knowledge retrieval. Typically, these telescopes beam down knowledge to floor stations or close by satellites. SuperBIT did so with SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, however the telescope gathered an excessive amount of knowledge to be transmitted repeatedly for your entire flight.

“It’s like streaming Netflix down from the sting of area,” says Massey. And not using a secure connection, that “streaming” was interrupted a number of instances in the course of 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 main exhausting drives. The information 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 knowledge on SD playing cards, those satellites dropped surveillance footage in movie cassettes.

The information retrieval system consists of elements which can be “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 gadget is related 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 means to face up to excessive rigidity. “Typically, the best issues are the very best options,” Sirk says.

SuperBIT’s Knowledge 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 gradual the autumn, and the Pi glides all the way down to Earth.

As a result of the balloon-based strategy is inexpensive than launching a telescope into orbit, the researchers had been capable of iterate the design and enhance their knowledge restoration system. So, whereas the fundamental design has been constant over the info restoration system’s improvement, a few of the particulars have modified.

For instance, on a 2019 check flight of SuperBIT and its data recovery, Massey and Sirks had been stunned to search out that the Raspberry Pi was overheating—regardless of the frigid setting. Within the higher environment, Massey explains, “it’s minus 60 levels [Celcius], however electronics simply are inclined to overheat and lower out.” The perpetrator was quickly found: Followers are normally 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 encircling setting. That means, the pc may emit warmth out into area and maintain the system cool.

The information restoration system can be a very good resolution 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 higher probability of dropping the telescope within the ocean, to allow them to’t depend on onboard exhausting drives. Nonetheless, Hamilton says, the retrieval itself presents challenges: First, you must get permission from the native air 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 an important a part of the retrieval. The capsules landed in a distant space with tough terrain, and the researchers solely knew the approximate areas; Sirks had developed software program to calculate the touchdown website based mostly on climate situations, however robust crosswinds over the Andes and a defective battery meant they couldn’t monitor the touchdown craft exactly.

One of many knowledge restoration techniques was additionally “inspected by the native wildlife” upon its touchdown, Massey says. A cougar discovered the gadget and dragged it away from the preliminary website. 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 such a knowledge restoration system. Now, Hamilton says NASA is wanting into different strategies of performing “knowledge drops,” via packages together with the FLOATing DRAGON Problem, a contest is in search of 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 thought:

“Subsequent time,” he says, ”I assume we’ll need to put one thing that smells a bit dangerous onto it.”