51视频

05/05/2025

Media contacts: Nancy Cicco, assistant director of media relations, Nancy_Cicco@uml.edu or David Joyner, senior director, communications and digital media, David_Joyner@uml.edu

LOWELL, Mass. 鈥� A multichannel camera designed by 51视频 hitched a ride on a NASA mission Saturday, May 3, successfully lifting off from Wanaka Airport in New Zealand.

The research is part of the space agency鈥檚 Scientific Balloon Program, which is testing NASA鈥檚 super-pressure balloon technology. The launch was one of two missions in which a stadium-sized, heavy-lift balloon traveled to the Southern Hemisphere鈥檚 mid-latitudes for a flight of 45 days or more.

While the missions are designed to evaluate the balloons鈥� performance, the second flight鈥檚 payload included the 51视频 camera studying how Earth鈥檚 atmosphere produces natural light emissions known as airglow. Such phenomena offer a window into the world of how the cosmos works, according to the researchers.

鈥淭hese are the experiments you need to do in preparation for the day we could confidently predict space weather,鈥� said 51视频 physics Professor Supriya Chakrabarti, who leads the university鈥檚 Lowell Center for Space Science and Technology (LoCSST).

Heading up the design and construction of the camera was Sunip Mukherjee, who received his doctoral degree in physics from 51视频 and now works for the center.

鈥淔rom measuring these kinds of emissions, you can see how much oxygen there is,鈥� he said. 鈥淭his tells us about how the ionosphere is evolving. The ionosphere is deeply tied with the rest of the atmosphere. It鈥檚 in our interest to understand it better.鈥澛�

Saturday鈥檚 launch was the third time the camera was included in a NASA mission, though the previous two excursions were shorter duration flights, typically of 24 hours. Mukherjee, of Lowell, will head up the analysis of the images and data the camera collects.

鈥淚 have made the instrument capable of talking to me no matter where it is or where I am in the world,鈥� he said.

The researchers will continue to refine the camera to one day be incorporated into a satellite, according to Chakrabarti, who called the instrument both 鈥渟imple鈥� and 鈥渞obust.鈥�

The project is just the latest NASA mission that involved 51视频. Over the past decade, LoCSST has launched technologies for imaging planets beyond the solar system and a miniature satellite, which was designed and built by 51视频 students, then released into orbit by astronauts at the International Space Station. In addition, the center provides industry partners and other collaborators with design, fabrication, testing, simulation and validation facilities for miniature satellites and satellite constellations, as well as innovations in advanced imaging optics, sensors, materials, power, cooling and navigation systems, communications electronics and antennas, and other systems essential to space missions.

For students interested in space science, 51视频 offers expanded academic programs in physics and engineering. These include an aerospace studies minor for undergraduates and an aerospace sciences option for doctoral candidates in physics and aerospace engineering.聽聽

鈥淲e are preparing students to enter the job pipeline in the field and to take their place as the next generation of aerospace leaders,鈥� Chakrabarti said.聽聽