14 DAY TRIAL // All the advancements made in space-related miniaturization technologies over the past few years are beginning to show their worth, especially in the form of CubeSats and NanoSats. Such a small spacecraft, called Firefly, is scheduled to launch in 2013, to investigate Earth's lightnings.
No larger than a milk carton, the small satellite will carry a full suite of scientific instruments, capable of producing viable data for mission controllers. The main goal of the Firefly mission will be to figure out the host of processes that interact in order for lightnings to be produced.
Airline pilots and astronauts aboard the International Space Station discovered unintentionally that lightnings look spectacular from above. They trigger terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGF), as well as phenomena called sprites. The nature of these processes is still largely undetermined.
Like all CubeSats, Firefly will feature electronic components of the same type found in modern smartphones. Their capabilities will be exploited through the use of miniaturized scientific instruments.
While less capable than their larger counterparts, these instruments are still capable of producing useful scientific data, at only a fraction of the costs associated with launching and operating larger payloads. Most CubeSats have thus far been launched on NASA and US Department of Defense (DOD) rockets.
Most of the time, they were student-built projects that hitched a ride to space whenever some extra room remained in a large delivery system. Given the success they had in orbit, experts now plan to use them as stand-alone orbital assets. The US National Science Foundation is leading the way.
The NSG already has several first-of-their-kind Cubesats in orbit, most of them trained on our planet's upper atmosphere. Firefly will complete the organization's range of capabilities by conducting studies on terrestrial gamma rays.
“Firefly will provide the first direct evidence for a relationship between lightning and TGFs. Identifying the source of terrestrial gamma-ray flashes will be a huge step toward understanding the physics of lightning and its effect on Earth's atmosphere,”Allan Weatherwax explains.
The expert, who is based at the Siena College, is a co-lead scientist on the Firefly project with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) expert Doug Rowland.
“Gamma rays are thought to be emitted by electrons traveling at or near the speed of light when they're slowed down by interactions with atoms in the upper atmosphere. TGFs are among our atmosphere's most interesting phenomena,” research scientist Moretto Jorgensen concludes.