“After a long process of preparation and testing, everything is in place for the Stratospolca scientific experiment — which aims to measure background radiation at the wavelength of gamma rays – to go into space in the Bexus 31 balloon”, from ESA, he says the UC, in a note sent today to the Lusa agency.
The project, which will be launched between Monday and October 1st, from the premises of the Esrange Space Center, in Kiruna, in northern Sweden, is authored by a group of students from the Astronomy, Astrophysics and Astronautics Section of the UC , under the supervision of Rui Curado Silva, professor at the Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Coimbra (FCTUC) and researcher at the Laboratory of Instrumentation and Experimental Particle Physics (LIP), and with the support of other researchers and technicians from this laboratory, from University of Beira Interior and University of Aveiro.
This scientific experiment, which was selected in 2019 by the Rexus/Bexus program (Rocket/Balloon Experiments for University Students) at ESA, “intends to measure the background radiation at the wavelength of gamma rays”, the UC says.
“Let’s imagine an old-school radio that, if it’s not on the right frequency, produces that familiar background noise. But to know what the music channel is, we need to know what noise is. In our experience, we do this: we measure the background radiation in the gamma rays, the noise, so that we can ‘hear the music’ that comes from distant celestial bodies”, illustrates the spokesperson for the UC student team, Henrique Neves.
To ensure that the system developed by the students met all the conditions for its launch, the Experiment Acceptance Review of the Stratospolca project took place in August in the LIP laboratories, referring to the UC, indicating that the test was attended by Armelle Frenea- Schmidt, an engineer for ESA’s Bexus program, who gave the go-ahead for the experiment to go into space.
Then, the team carried out the final tests, ensuring that “the signals produced by the radiation detector were correctly transmitted through the various floors of the electronic system, to the data recording and analysis interface”, explains the FCTUC professor and researcher, Rui Curado Silva.
The results of measurements carried out by Stratospolca, points out the professor, “will help to improve the sensitivity of future telescopes that observe the sky in the gamma wavelength”.
At this wavelength, he adds, “the sky reveals the most energetic and cataclysmic phenomena in the Universe, such as supernovas, pulsars, the center of galaxies or the collapse of stars, in particular, new gamma ray bursts associated with the detection of gravitational waves, contributing to the new area of multi-messenger astronomy”.
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