For hundreds of years, people have sought to check the celebrities and celestial our bodies, whether or not by means of observations made by bare eye or by telescopes on the bottom and in house that may view the universe throughout practically the complete electromagnetic spectrum. Every view unlocks new details about the denizens of house — X-ray pulsars, gamma-ray bursts — however one continues to be lacking: the low-frequency radio sky.
Researchers from MIT Lincoln Laboratory, the MIT Haystack Observatory, and Lowell Observatory are engaged on a NASA-funded idea research known as the Nice Observatory for Lengthy Wavelengths, or GO-LoW, that outlines a technique to view the universe at as-of-yet unseen low frequencies utilizing a constellation of 1000’s of small satellites. The wavelengths of those frequencies are 15 meters to a number of kilometers in size, which suggests they require a really large telescope to be able to see clearly.
“GO-LoW will probably be a brand new sort of telescope, made up of many 1000’s of spacecraft that work collectively semi-autonomously, with restricted enter from Earth,” says Mary Knapp, the principal investigator for GO-LoW on the MIT Haystack Observatory. “GO-LoW will enable people to see the universe in a brand new mild, opening up one of many final frontiers within the electromagnetic spectrum.”
The problem in viewing the low-frequency radio sky comes from Earth’s ionosphere, a layer of the ambiance that comprises charged particles that stop very low-frequency radio waves from passing by means of. Due to this fact, a space-based instrument is required to watch these wavelengths. One other problem is that long-wavelength observations require correspondingly giant telescopes, which might have to be many kilometers in size if constructed utilizing conventional dish antenna designs. GO-LoW will use interferometry — a method that mixes alerts from many spatially separated receivers that, when put collectively, will operate as one giant telescope — to acquire extremely detailed information from exoplanets and different sources in house. An analogous method was used to make the primary picture of a black gap and, extra lately, an picture of the primary recognized extrasolar radiation belts.
Melodie Kao, a member of the group from Lowell Observatory, says the information may reveal particulars about an exoplanet’s make-up and potential for all times. “[The radio wave aurora around an exoplanet] carries necessary info, corresponding to whether or not or not the planet has a magnetic subject, how sturdy it’s, how briskly the planet is rotating, and even hints about what’s inside,” she says. “Learning exoplanet radio aurorae and the magnetic fields that they hint is a crucial piece of the habitability puzzle, and it is a key science purpose for GO-LoW.”
A number of current traits and know-how developments will make GO-LoW attainable within the close to future, such because the declining price of mass-produced small satellites, the rise of mega-constellations, and the return of enormous, high-capacity launch autos like NASA’s Area Launch System. Go-LoW could be the primary mega-constellation that makes use of interferometry for scientific functions.
The GO-LoW constellation will probably be constructed by means of a number of successive launches, every containing 1000’s of spacecraft. As soon as they attain low-Earth orbit, the spacecraft will probably be refueled earlier than journeying on to their remaining vacation spot — an Earth-sun Lagrange level the place they’ll then be deployed. Lagrange factors are areas in house the place the gravitational forces of two giant celestial our bodies (just like the solar and Earth) are in equilibrium, such {that a} spacecraft requires minimal gas to keep up its place relative to the 2 bigger our bodies.  At this lengthy distance from Earth (1 astronomical unit, or roughly 93 million miles), there may also be a lot much less radio-frequency interference that might in any other case obscure GO-LoW’s delicate measurements.
“GO-LoW may have a hierarchical structure consisting of 1000’s of small listener nodes and a smaller variety of bigger communication and computation nodes (CCNs),” says Kat Kononov, a group member from Lincoln Laboratory’s Utilized Area Techniques Group, who has been working with MIT Haystack workers since 2020, with Knapp serving as her mentor throughout graduate college. A node refers to a person small satellite tv for pc throughout the constellation. “The listener nodes are small, comparatively easy 3U CubeSats — in regards to the measurement of a loaf of bread — that acquire information with their low-frequency antennas, retailer it in reminiscence, and periodically ship it to their communication and computation node through a radio hyperlink.” As compared, the CCNs are in regards to the measurement of a mini-fridge.
The CCN will preserve observe of the positions of the listener nodes of their neighborhood; acquire and scale back the information from their respective listener nodes (round 100 of them); after which transmit that information again to Earth, the place extra intensive information processing could be carried out.
At full power, with roughly 100,000 listener nodes, the GO-LoW constellation ought to be capable of see exoplanets with magnetic fields within the photo voltaic neighborhood — inside 5 to 10 parsecs — many for the very first time.
The GO-LoW analysis group lately printed the outcomes of their findings from Part I of the research, which recognized a sort of superior antenna known as a vector sensor as one of the best kind for this utility. In 2024, Lincoln Laboratory designed a compact deployable model of the sensor appropriate to be used in house.
The group is now engaged on Part II of this system, which is to construct a multi-agent simulation of constellation operations.
“What we discovered through the Part I research is that the laborious half for GO-LoW isn’t any particular know-how … the laborious half is the system: the system engineering and the autonomy to run the system,” says Knapp. “So, how can we construct this constellation such that it is a tractable drawback? That is what we’re exploring on this subsequent a part of the research.”
GO-LoW is considered one of many civil house applications at Lincoln Laboratory that goal to harness superior applied sciences initially developed for nationwide safety to allow new house missions that help science and society. “By adapting these capabilities to serve new stakeholders, the laboratory helps open novel frontiers of discovery whereas constructing resilient, cost-effective techniques that profit the nation and the world,” says Laura Kennedy, who’s the deputy lead of Lincoln Laboratory’s Civil Area Techniques and Know-how Workplace.
“Like touchdown on the moon in 1969, or launching Hubble within the Nineties, GO-LoW is envisioned to allow us to see one thing we have by no means seen earlier than and generate scientific breakthroughs,” says Kononov.
Go-LoW is a collaboration between Lincoln Laboratory, Haystack Observatory, and Lowell College, in addition to Lenny Paritsky from LeafLabs and Jacob Turner from Cornell College.
