NASA’s CURIE Mission To Study Radio Signals From the Sun, Understand Solar Emissions From Coronal Mass Ejections

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Radio signals emanate from somewhere within our Sun, and NASA aims to find their source.

Unveiling Mysterious Radio Waves

The sun's surface periodically erupts in some spectacular activities, such as coronal mass ejections and solar flares. These activities on the Sun also result in mysterious radio waves that have puzzled astronomers since their finding many decades ago.

Experts are aware that the source of these radio waves occur somewhere inside coronal mass ejections (CMEs). However, these solar eruptions are huge, making it hard to specifically identify the source of radio signals.

A coronal mass ejection bursts and throws out billions of tons into space and can easily dwarf a planet. They can even stretch as they travel, swallowing a quarter of the space between the Sun and Earth.

One of the aspects of solar events that astronomers have been interested in is being able to understand the nature of solar events, such as coronal mass ejections. Other than the fact that these emanations give off huge bombardments of solar material, they also release very powerful magnetic fields that are able to influence the planets of the Solar System in ways that remain beyond the understanding and control of humankind.

Here on Earth, magnetic fields affect our atmosphere and can seriously damage the electronic infrastructure and the communication systems. Additionally, it is tough to track coronal mass Ejections, and their relation with the Solar Flares is not clear as of yet.

New Solar Mission

On July 9, the European Space Agency's (ESA) Ariane 6 rocket was lifted off for the first time ever from Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, at 3:01 p.m EDT (1901 GMT). Its first appearance had been scheduled earlier to happen in 2020 but was slipped by technical problems and various others related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The launch also carried the CubeSat Radio Interferometry Experiment (CURIE) as a rideshare payload on its maiden voyage. It will explore the mysterious radio bursts by sending up two satellites into orbit around Earth.

It is designed by experts from the University of California, Berkeley. Experts say it will study the main drivers of space weather using radio interferometry. The low-frequency radio interferometry to be used by the mission in space has never been done before.

The twin satellites will be deployed 360 miles above the Earth's surface after the launch. They will also scan 0.1 to 19 megahertz of radio waves with their dual eight-foot antennas.

The pair of satellites will also be launched about two miles apart from one another. Scientists will then measure the small difference between how much time it takes for the radio signals to reach each satellite in trying to exactly calculate from where they came.

According to Principal Investigator David Sundkvist from UC Berkeley, the program was the first to fly a radio interferometer in space in a controlled manner and is, therefore, a pathfinder for radio astronomy in general.

This is because the radio waves get absorbed by the Earth's ionosphere before it reaches the ground and hence must be observed from space. The ionosphere is the layer of atmosphere that extends 30-600 miles above the surface of the Earth, which is filled with charged gases.