In a recent paper, a team of NASA researchers proposed how spacecraft could search for evidence of additional physical within our Solar Systems. This search, they argue, would be assisted by the spacecraft flying in a tetrahedral formation and using interferometers

In a recent paper, a team of NASA researchers proposed that spacecraft could search for evidence of additional physical within our Solar Systems by flying in a tetrahedral formation and using interferometers. The team also considered data from the James Webb Space Telescope

The James Webb Space Telescope can split the light of distant stars into its various wavelengths. This allows it to search for the characteristic signs of certain molecules in the atmosphere of the discovered planets. 

The solar system formed about 4.5 billion years ago from a dense cloud of interstellar gas and dust. When this dust cloud collapsed, it formed a solar nebula – a spinning, swirling disk of material. 

NASA has helped us understand the solar system by studying the sun, space weather, magnetospheres, and the layers of the atmosphere. NASA’s research has confirmed the existence of over 2,000 extrasolar planets, and has found that many of these planets are rocky and may have liquid water. NASA has also sent spacecraft beyond Earth to explore our solar system, including: 

• Voyager 1: Entered interstellar space in 2012 
• Voyager 2: Entered interstellar space in 2018 
• New Horizons: Explores the Kuiper Belt, an icy region beyond Neptune 
• Perseverance: Landed on Mars in 2021 to search for signs of ancient life, collect samples, and test new technology

NASA also helps us understand space weather by studying variations of the sun in real-time. The sun’s energy and plasma can create space weather that can interfere with space technology and communications systems. NASA satellites also help people better understand weather patterns on Earth

Each progression from flybys, to orbiting spacecraft, to landers and rovers, to sample return missionshelps advance our understanding of the formation of planetary bodies, the chemical and physical history of the solar system, and the conditions that are capable of sustaining life

Technology has helped us understand the solar system in many ways. Here are a few examples: 

• Telescopes: Telescopes allow us to see objects in the solar system in much greater detail than we could with the naked eye. This has helped us to learn more about the composition, structure, and surface features of planets, moons, asteroids, and comets. 
• Spacecraft: Spacecraft allow us to send probes to other planets and moons in the solar system. These probes can collect data on the atmosphere, surface, and interior of these objects, which helps us to understand them better. 
• Computers: Computers allow us to model the solar system and to simulate the behavior of different objects in the solar system. This helps us to understand how the solar system formed and evolved, and to predict how it will change in the future. 

Here are some specific examples of how technology has been used to learn about the solar system: 

• The Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft have been traveling through the solar system for over 40 years. They have sent back data on the planets, moons, and asteroids they have encountered, and they have helped us to learn more about the outer reaches of the solar system. 
• The Cassini spacecraft spent 13 years orbiting Saturn. It sent back data on the planet’s atmosphere, rings, and moons. It also discovered a new moon, Enceladus, which has a subsurface ocean that could potentially support life. 
• The New Horizons spacecraft flew by Pluto in 2015. It sent back the first close-up images of the dwarf planet, and it helped us to learn more about its composition, structure, and surface features. 

These are just a few examples of how technology has helped us to understand the solar system. As technology continues to advance, we can expect to learn even more about our solar system in the years to come.

It’s an exciting time for the fields of astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology. Thanks to cutting-edge observatories, instruments, and new techniques, scientists are getting closer to experimentally verifying theories that remain largely untested. These theories address some of the most pressing questions scientists have about the Universe and the physical laws governing it – like the nature of gravity, Dark Matter, and Dark Energy. For decades, scientists have postulated that either there is additional physics at work or that our predominant cosmological model needs to be revised.

We are eager to explore questions surrounding the mysteries of dark energy and dark matter. Despite their discovery in the last century, their underlying causes remain elusive. Should these ‘anomalies’ stem from new physics—phenomena yet to be observed in ground-based laboratories or particle accelerators—it’s possible that this novel force could manifest on a solar system scale.”

These deviations are hypothesized to manifest as nonzero elements in the gravity gradient tensor (GGT), fundamentally akin to a solution of the Poisson equation. Due to their minuscule nature, detecting these deviations demands precision far surpassing current capabilities—by at least five orders of magnitude. At such a heightened level of accuracy, numerous well-known effects will introduce significant noise. The strategy involves conducting differential measurements to negate the impact of known forces, thereby revealing the subtle, yet nonzero, contributions to the GGT.”

The spacecraft will also be equipped with atom interferometers, which use the wavecharacter of atoms to measure the difference in phase between atomic matter waves along different paths. This technique will allow the spacecraft to detect the presence of non-gravitational noise (thruster activity, solar radiation pressure, thermal recoil forces, etc.) and negate them to the necessary degree. Meanwhile, flying in a tetrahedral formation will optimize the spacecraft’s ability to compare measurements

Laser ranging will offer us highly accurate data on the distances and relative velocities between spacecraft,” said Turyshev. “Furthermore, its exceptional precision will allow us to measure the rotation of a tetrahedron formation relative to an inertial reference frame (via Sagnac observables), a task unachievable by any other means. Consequently, this will establish a tetrahedral formation leveraging a suite of local measurements

We aim to enhance the precision of testing GR and alternative gravitational theories by more than five orders of magnitude. Beyond this primary objective, our mission has additional scientific goals, which we will detail in our subsequent paper. These include testing GR and other gravitational theories, detecting gravitational waves in the micro-Hertz range—a spectrum not reachable by existing or envisioned instruments— and exploring aspects of the solar system, such as the hypothetical Planet 9, among other endeavors.”

Tetrahedral configurations of spacecraft on unperturbed heliocentric orbits allow for highly precise observations of small spatial changes in the gravitational field, especially those affecting the gravity gradient tensor (GGT). The resulting high sensitivity may be used to search for new physics that could manifest itself via deviations from general relativistic behavior yielding a non-vanishing trace of the GGT. We study the feasibility of recovering the trace[GGT] with the sensitivity of O(10−24 s−2) – the level where some of the recently proposed cosmological models may have observable effects in the solar system

Specifically, we consider how a set of local measurements provided by precision laser ranging (to measure the inter-satellite ranges) and atom-wave interferometry (to correct for any local non-gravitational disturbances) can be used for that purpose. We report on a preliminary study of such an experiment and on the precision that may be reached in measuring the trace[GGT], with the assumption of drag-compensated spacecraft by atom interferometer measurements. For that, we study the dynamical behavior of a tetrahedral formation established by four spacecraft placed on nearby elliptical orbits around the Sun

Formation Flying

The focus of formation flying is to maintain a targeted orbit configuration of various spacecraft. Having multiple satellites fly in a specific geometry avoids the technical and financial challenge of building one satellite of equivalent size.

NASA Ames has taken a close interest in formation flying missions. Formation flying consists on the maintenance of a desired relative separation and orientation between multiple spacecraft. There are various types of formation flying missions, such as constellations (a collection of spacecraft that make up the space element of a distributed space mission), and swarms (a collection of spacecraft operating in close proximity as a single entity)

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