Telescopes has been astonishing friends to astronauts and to people who want to know more about space. Space has been subject of study and mystery since decades. Considering it NASA has selected a new space telescope proposal that will study recent history of star birth, star death and chemical elements in the Milky Way. A gamma ray telescope named Compton Spectrometer and Images ( COSI) is expected to launch in 2025 which is NASA”s latest astrophysics mission.
There were 18 telescope proposals in 2019 out of which four were selected by NASA’s Astrophysics Explorers. It was reviewed by panel of scientists and engineers and NASA has selected COSI to continue the development.
Once the mission run COSI will answer questions about origins of chemical elements in our Milky Way galaxy and it will provide insights to the formation of earth itself,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
The gamma ray telescope COSI will study gamma says produced when massive star exploded where chemical elements were formed in the Milky Way. The mission also investigate mysterious origin of our galaxy’s positrons known as antielectrons. Antielectrons are subatomic particles that have same mass as an electron but they carry a positive charge.
NASA will select launch provider later. The COSI team spent decades developing their technology in flights and scientific balloons.
NASA’s Explorers Program is agency’s oldest continuous program. It provides low coast access to space using principal investigator research done in astrophysics and heliophysics program. Since the 1958 launch which discovered Earth’s radiation the program has launched more than 90 missions. A mission named Cosmic Background Explorer won Nobel Prize in 2006 for its principal investigators. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the program for the agency.
The mission will cost approximately $145 million excluding launch costs. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the program for the agency.
