The spacecraft was located immediately above a thunderstorm for most of the observed TGFs, but in four cases, storms were far from Fermi. Download this video from NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio. Thanks to instrument tweaks, the team has been able to improve the detection rate to several TGFs per week. Now we learn that it can discover mysteries much, much closer to home,” said Ilana Harrus, Fermi program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.įermi’s Gamma-ray Burst Monitor detected 130 TGFs from August 2008 to the end of 2010. “In orbit for less than three years, the Fermi mission has proven to be an amazing tool to probe the universe. The GBM team has identified 130 TGFs since Fermi’s launch in 2008. The GBM constantly monitors the entire celestial sky above and the Earth below. The GBM has detected gamma rays with energies of 511,000 electron volts, a signal indicating an electron has met its antimatter counterpart, a positron.Īlthough Fermi’s GBM is designed to observe high-energy events in the universe, it’s also providing valuable insights into this strange phenomenon. When antimatter striking Fermi collides with a particle of normal matter, both particles immediately are annihilated and transformed into gamma rays. Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.įermi is designed to monitor gamma rays, the highest energy form of light. Download this video in HD format from NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio. Scientists now think that most TGFs produce particle beams and antimatter. Acting like enormous particle accelerators, the storms can emit gamma-ray flashes, called TGFs, and high-energy electrons and positrons. The Planetary Missions Program Office at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, executes program management of the Europa Clipper mission.NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope has detected beams of antimatter launched by thunderstorms. APL designed the main spacecraft body in collaboration with JPL and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Managed by Caltech in Pasadena, California, JPL leads the development of the Europa Clipper mission in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The mission’s detailed exploration of Europa will help scientists better understand the astrobiological potential for habitable worlds beyond our planet. The mission’s three main science objectives are to understand the nature of the ice shell and the ocean beneath it, along with the moon’s composition and geology. More About the MissionĮuropa Clipper’s main science goal is to determine whether there are places below the surface of Jupiter’s icy moon, Europa, that could support life. Future seasons of the series will cover other missions under construction at JPL. While you’re digging into the nuts and bolts of the spacecraft, check out a 24-hour live feed of assembly in progress in High Bay 1.Īdditional episodes of “Spacecraft Makers” will include more activity inside other clean rooms where components of Europa Clipper are coming together. They venture into JPL’s storied High Bay 1 clean room, where Europa Clipper is under construction – and where all of NASA’s Mars rovers, the twin Voyager spacecraft, and other historic spacecraft were assembled. In the video, he joins Deputy Science Manager Trina Ray, who worked on NASA’s Cassini and Galileo missions. The series’ premiere episode features Europa Clipper Project Manager Jordan Evans, who also has worked on NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover and the agency’s Hubble Space Telescope. The goal is to find out whether Europa has the potential to support life. Learn more in the video.) On each flyby, a suite of science instruments will gather data on the depth of the subsurface ocean, the thickness of the ice crust, and, potentially, the characteristics of any plumes that may be venting subsurface water into space. (It can’t orbit Europa because doing so would bring Europa Clipper too close to the gas giant’s brutal radiation belts. The spacecraft will fly by the moon about 50 times while orbiting Jupiter.
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