Dark Matter Data Saved Via Parachute

A NASA high-altitude balloon flight earlier this yr served as reminder of an ever-important lesson: Always again up your information.

In April in Wānaka, New Zealand, researchers launched the Super Pressure Balloon Imaging Telescope, or SuperBIT, a balloon-based telescope that aimed to assemble information on dark-matter distribution by imaging colliding galaxies. SuperBIT floated on the fringe of the environment for 40 days gathering information earlier than it returned to Earth. Upon touchdown, nevertheless, the balloon was considerably broken. What saved the day was two information restoration techniques (whose specs the researchers not too long ago revealed) that earlier within the day had already parachuted right down to the Patagonia area of Argentina, rescuing greater than 200 gigabytes of SuperBIT observations.

“It’s like streaming Netflix down from the edge of space.”
—Richard Massey, Durham University, England

“For all of the elements on the periodic table, there’s about six times as much dark matter,” says Richard Massey, a professor of physics at Durham University in England. Dark matter’s solely results on seen matter, famously, can solely be noticed not directly by means of gravitational results. “It’s a bit like studying the wind,” Massey explains. “You can’t see the wind if you look outside, but you can see leaves blowing around.”

SuperBIT launched from Wānaka, New Zealand, on 16 April 2023.Bill Rodman/NASA

SuperBIT has educated its give attention to galaxy clusters, the place a whole bunch to 1000’s of galaxies bunch collectively, generally colliding. “We’re using SuperBIT to map where the bits fly, so we can hopefully figure out what this invisible stuff is,” Massey says.

Ground-based telescopes don’t have the decision the researchers wanted to carry out these observations, and current house telescopes—which obtain a lot increased decision by avoiding scattering from the environment—use both too slim or too extensive a area of view. Dangling a telescope from a balloon greater than 30 kilometers up supplied a super resolution, attaining practically the identical decision as an area telescope at a fraction of the associated fee. “It sounds a little bit crazy, but it works remarkably well,” says Ellen Sirks, a analysis affiliate on the University of Sydney. She started engaged on SuperBIT as a doctoral scholar of Massey.

While telescopes like Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescope value billions of {dollars}, balloon telescopes could be launched “at a university budget,” Sirks says.

Raspberry Pi by Parachute

Balloon-based telescopes current challenges too, resembling dependable information retrieval. Generally, 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 the complete flight.

“It’s like streaming Netflix down from the edge of space,” says Massey. Without a secure connection, that “streaming” was interrupted a number of occasions through the flight and misplaced about two weeks into the mission. Luckily, the group had devised a bodily backup system, supplementing the satellite tv for pc connection and the telescope’s major onerous drives. The information had been copied onto the data-recovery system and dropped from the sky.

“It sort of hearkens back to the 1960s and spy satellites,” Massey says. Instead of scientific information on SD playing cards, these satellites dropped surveillance footage in movie cassettes.

The data-retrieval system consists of elements which can be “relatively commonplace,” Sirks says. For the electronics, it makes use of a Raspberry Pi compact laptop together with an SD card with 5 terabytes of storage. The storage system is linked to the telescope’s onboard laptop through Ethernet to repeatedly switch the information, and it’s hooked up to the telescope with mechanical pincers utilized by skilled archers and chosen due to their capability to face up to excessive rigidity. “Sometimes, the simplest things are the best solutions,” Sirk says.

SuperBIT’s Data Recovery 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 right down to Earth.

Because the balloon-based method is inexpensive than launching a telescope into orbit, the researchers had been in a position to iterate the design and enhance their data-recovery system. So, whereas the fundamental design has been constant over the data-recovery system’s growth, a number of the particulars have modified.

For instance, on a 2019 take a look at flight of SuperBIT and its information restoration, Massey and Sirks had been shocked to search out that the Raspberry Pi was overheating—regardless of the frigid atmosphere. In the higher environment, Massey explains, “it’s -60 degrees [Celsius], but electronics just tend to overheat and cut out.” The perpetrator was quickly found: Fans are often used to chill down these computer systems, however at that altitude, there’s hardly any air to move the warmth. In the up to date model of the system, the researchers added a radiator system with a copper tube linking the pc to the encircling atmosphere. That manner, the pc may emit warmth out into house and preserve the system cool.

The data-recovery system can be a superb resolution for flights—like SuperBIT’s—that spend a very long time over our bodies of water, says Andrew Hamilton, the performing chief of NASA’s Balloon Program. In these flights, there’s a better likelihood of dropping the telescope within the ocean, to allow them to’t depend on onboard onerous drives. However, Hamilton says, the retrieval itself presents challenges: First, you need to get permission from the native air visitors authority to drop the information capsules. Then, the researchers have to search out the place the capsules have landed.

Before dropping two capsules carrying separate copies of the information, 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 knew solely the approximate areas; Sirks had developed software program to calculate the touchdown website 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 the data-recovery techniques was additionally “inspected by the local wildlife” upon its touchdown, Massey says. A cougar discovered the system and dragged it away from the preliminary website. Luckily, the system wasn’t broken badly, and the information was secure.

SuperBIT’s flight earlier this yr, Hamilton says, was the primary time that the NASA Balloon Program had used the sort of data-recovery system. Now, Hamilton says NASA is trying into different strategies of performing “data drops,” by means of applications together with the FLOATing DRAGON Challenge, 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 they’d with the system’s battery throughout its descent. And, to maintain the system secure from wildlife after touchdown, Massey has an thought:

“Next time,” he says, ”I suppose we’ll must put one thing that smells a bit dangerous onto it.”