University of Michigan received NASA funding to study solar radiation. | Stock Photo
University of Michigan received NASA funding to study solar radiation. | Stock Photo
The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor received $62 million from NASA to lead a study of radiation caused by solar weather, according to reports.
The university was selected to lead the NASA mission to provide better information about how the environment that spacecraft and astronauts travel through is affected by radiation caused by the sun, dBusiness.com in April.
The Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment, or SunRISE, will consist of miniature satellites called cubesats, dBusiness.com. These will form a virtual telescope in space to detect and study the radio waves that precede major solar events.
Justin Kasper, who is the professor of climate and space sciences and engineering at U-M and will si head of the mission that is expected to launch in 2023.
“We can see a solar flare start, and a coronal mass ejection start lifting off from the sun, but we don’t know if it is going to produce high-energy particle radiation, and we don’t know if that high energy particle radiation is going to reach Earth,” Kasper told dBusiness.com. “One reason why is we can’t see the particles being accelerated. We just see them when they arrive at the spacecraft, which isn’t much of a warning.”
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