Departments
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Week of 23 April 1999 |
Vol. II, No. 32 |
Feature
Article
What's hot on the BU Web:
Terriers: Boston University's satellite
"Many days this past week there has been no sun," sang Lena Horne in MGM's 1943 musical Stormy Weather. But the meteorological problem in outer space today is radiation storms that originate from the sun. This space weather interacts with the earth's magnetic field and affects transmissions from communications satellites, along with communications systems on the ground.
However, BU's terriers satellite, scheduled to be launched this spring from Vandenberg Air Force Base, near Lompoc, Calif., will give scientists an unprecedented view of the ionosphere and enable them better to predict space weather, which can pose a significant threat to astronauts who might be caught in a storm while working outside their spacecraft.
"There is an increasing need to understand this environment as changing conditions in the ionosphere affect transmissions from communication satellites -- disrupting such devices as cell phones, beepers, and global positioning systems," says Dan Cotton, terriers principal investigator and assistant research professor of space physics at CAS. Space weather can have an adverse effect on orbiting spacecraft such as NASA's Space Shuttle and the International Space Station. Built by BU undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty, terriers will produce three-dimensional images of the ionosphere -- and they will be accessible on this Web site.
A tour of the satellite is available using a free Apple QuickTime plug-in, which allows Web viewers to zoom in, zoom out, and enjoy a panoramic view. One can also point and click on a link to meet the terriers team. Another link even has instructions for making your own paper or cardboard satellite replica.
Terriers, which stands for Tomographic Experiment Using Radiative Recombinative Ionospheric EUV and Radio Sources, is part of NASA's Student Explorer Demonstration Initiative. -- BF