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NASA’s GUSTO Prepares to Map Space Between the Stars


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NASA’s GUSTO Prepares to Map Space Between the Stars

GUSTO's star trackers being calibrated while the payload is suspended by crane payload suspended by crane
 The GUSTO telescope hangs from the hangar crane during telescope pointing tests at the Long Duration Balloon Facility on the Ross Ice Shelf near the U.S. National Science Foundation’s McMurdo Station, Antarctica, on Dec. 6, 2023. Mission specialists were calibrating the star cameras, used to determine the direction of pointing of the telescope.
Credit: José Silva on behalf of the GUSTO Team

On a vast ice sheet in Antarctica, scientists and engineers are preparing a NASA experiment called GUSTO to explore the universe on a balloon. GUSTO will launch from the Ross Ice Shelf, near the U.S. National Science Foundation’s McMurdo Station research base, no earlier than Dec. 21.

GUSTO, which stands for Galactic/Extragalactic ULDB Spectroscopic Terahertz Observatory, will peer into the space between stars called the interstellar medium. The balloon-borne telescope will help scientists make a 3D map of a large part of the Milky Way in extremely high-frequency radio waves. Examining a 100-square-degree area, GUSTO will explore the many phases of the interstellar medium and the abundances of key chemical elements in the galaxy.

By studying the LMC and comparing it to the Milky Way, we’ll be able to understand how galaxies evolve from the early universe until now.

Chris Walker

Chris Walker

GUSTO principal investigator

In particular, GUSTO will scan the interstellar medium for carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen because they are critical for life on Earth. These elements can also help scientists disentangle the complex web of processes that sculpt the interstellar medium.  

While our galaxy brims with billions of stars, including our Sun, that are interesting in their own right, the space between them holds a wealth of clues about how stars and planets are born.

The interstellar medium is where diffuse, cold gas and dust accumulate into gigantic cosmic structures called molecular clouds, which, under the right conditions, can collapse to form new stars. From the swirling disk of material around the young star, planets can form.

GUSTO is unique in its ability to examine the first part of this process, “to understand how these clouds form in the first place,” Chris Walker, principal investigator of GUSTO at the University of Arizona, said. GUSTO is a collaboration between NASA, the University of Arizona, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), and the Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON); as well as MIT, JPL, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and others.

Flipping GUSTO from horizontal to vertical
The GUSTO telescope is seen on Nov. 9, 2023, as Colombia Scientific Balloon Facility personnel assist the GUSTO team in flipping the observatory from a horizontal position to a vertical position. The photo was taken at the Long Duration Balloon Facility on the Ross Ice Shelf near the U.S. National Science Foundation’s McMurdo Station, Antarctica.
Credit: José Silva on behalf of the GUSTO Team

Eventually, when massive stars die and explode as supernovae, massive shock waves ripple through molecular clouds, which can in turn lead to more stars being born, or simply destroy the clouds. GUSTO can also look at this end stage of the molecular clouds.

GUSTO functions as a cosmic radio, equipped to “listen” for particular cosmic ingredients. That’s because it senses the high-frequency signals that atoms and molecules transmit. The “T” in GUSTO stands for “terahertz” – that’s about a thousand times higher than the frequencies that cellphones operate at.

“We basically have this radio system that we built that we can turn the knob and tune to the frequency of those lines,” Walker said. “And if we hear something, we know it’s them. We know it’s those atoms and molecules.”

As the telescope moves across the sky, scientists will use it to map the intensity and velocities of the signals from particular atoms and molecules at each position. “Then we can go back and connect the dots and create an image that looks like a photograph of what the emission looks like,” Walker said.

Observations like these can’t be done for carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen from Earth-based telescopes because of the water vapor in our atmosphere absorbing the light from the atoms and molecules in question, interfering with measurements. On a balloon about 120,000 feet above the ground, GUSTO will fly above most of that water vapor. “For the type of science we do, it’s as good as being in space,” Walker said.

The GUSTO telescope will also reveal the 3D structure of the Large Magellanic Cloud, or LMC, a dwarf galaxy near our Milky Way. The LMC resembles some of the galaxies of the early universe that NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is exploring. But since the LMC is much closer than the distant early galaxies, scientists can examine it in greater detail with GUSTO.

“By studying the LMC and comparing it to the Milky Way, we’ll be able to understand how galaxies evolve from the early universe until now,” Walker explained.

GUSTO is expected to fly for at least 55 days on a 39 million cubic-foot zero-pressure balloon, a type of balloon that can fly high for long periods of time in the Austral Summer over Antarctica and has the diameter of a football field as it floats.

LDBF sign at McMurdo
GUSTO team member José Silva, Ph.D. student at the Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON), stands next to the Long Duration Balloon Facility sign on the Ross Ice Shelf, 8 miles from the U.S. National Science Foundation’s McMurdo Station, Antarctica, on Nov. 9, 2023.
Credit: Geoffrey Palo on behalf of the GUSTO Team

Antarctica provides an ideal launch location for GUSTO. During the southern hemisphere’s summer, the continent gets constant sunlight, so a scientific balloon can be extra stable there. Plus, the atmospheric zone around the South Pole generates cold rotating air – creating a phenomenon called an anticyclone, which enables balloons to fly in circles without disturbance.

“Missions will fly in circles around the South Pole for days or weeks at a time, which is really valuable to the science community,” said Andrew Hamilton, chief of the NASA Balloon Program Office at the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. “The longer they have for observation, the more science they can get. 

GUSTO is the first balloon-borne experiment in NASA’s Explorer program. It has the same scientific reach as the program’s space-borne satellites, such as TESS (the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) and IXPE (Imaging X-Ray Polarimetry Explorer).

“With GUSTO, we’re really trying to trailblaze,” said Kieran Hegarty, Program Manager for GUSTO at APL. “We want to show that balloon investigations do return compelling science.”

A total of twelve mission team members from University of Arizona and APL are on site in Antarctica performing the final checks before GUSTO’s launch.

With seals and penguins nearby, Walker and colleagues are hard at work readying this experiment for its ultimate adventure in the sky. For Walker, GUSTO represents some 30 years of effort, the outgrowth of many experiments from Earth-based telescopes and other balloon efforts.

“We all feel very fortunate and privileged to do a mission like this – to have the opportunity to put together the world’s most advanced terahertz instrument ever created, and then drag it halfway around the world and then launch it,” he said. “It’s a challenge, but we feel honored and humbled to be in the position to do it.”

About the Mission

In March 2017, NASA Astrophysics Division selected the Explorer Mission of Opportunity GUSTO (Galactic/Extragalactic ULDB Spectroscopic Terahertz Observatory) to measure emissions from the interstellar medium to help scientists determine the life cycle of interstellar gas by surveying a large region of our Milky Way galaxy and the Large Magellanic Cloud. The GUSTO mission is led by Principal Investigator Christopher Walker from the University of Arizona in Tucson. The team also includes the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, which provided the balloon platform to mount the instrumentation, known as the gondola, and the GUSTO project management. The University of Arizona provided the GUSTO telescope and the focal plane instrument, which incorporates detector technologies from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Arizona State University in Tempe, and SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research.

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Elizabeth Landau
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0845
elizabeth.r.landau@nasa.gov

Alise Fisher
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-2546
alise.m.fisher@nasa.gov

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      Note: The following article is part of a series highlighting propulsion testing at NASA’s Stennis Space Center. To access the entire series, please visit: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/propulsion-powering-space-dreams/.
      An aerial image from 1965 shows the dual flame trenches of the Thad Cochran Test Stand (B-1/B-2) under construction at NASA’s Stennis Space Center (then known as Mississippi Test Operations) taking shape.NASA/Stennis Since the United States sent the first humans to the Moon more than 60 years ago, NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, has answered the call to help power the nation’s space dreams.  
      “History shows NASA Stennis is the country’s premier rocket engine test site and the go-to place for propulsion testing,” NASA Stennis Director John Bailey said. “It started with Apollo and continued through space shuttle. Now, we are going back to the Moon and beyond with Artemis – and it all comes through NASA Stennis.” 
      As the nation raced to send the first humans to the Moon, NASA selected a remote location in Hancock County, Mississippi, in October 1961 to test the needed rocket stages. Thanks to a massive construction project, the site conducted its first Saturn V rocket stage test in April 1966. In the next four-plus years, NASA Stennis tested 27 Saturn V stages, including those that launched 12 astronauts to walk on the Moon.  
      “Talking to people working here during those years, you hear how much they believed in the mission,” said Joe Schuyler, director of the NASA Stennis Engineering and Test Directorate. “Their hard work helped America reach the Moon and showed us the possibilities for NASA Stennis.”   
      Construction workers bring down a tree during the early days of construction for NASA’s Stennis Space Center. Tree-cutting to start what was the largest construction project in Mississippi – and one of the largest in the United States – at the time began May 17, 1963.NASA/Stennis NASA Stennis (then known as the Mississippi Test Facility) conducts its first-ever test firing – a 15-second hot fire of the Saturn V S-II-C second stage prototype – on the A-2 Test Stand on April 23, 1966.NASA/Stennis An aerial image from early 1967 shows the completed A-2 Test Stand in the foreground and the Thad Cochran Test Stand (B-1/B-2) in the background at NASA’s Stennis Space Center, then known as the Mississippi Test Facility.NASA/Stennis NASA officials view the first space shuttle main engine test on the Fred Haise Test Stand (formerly the A-1 Test Stand) at NASA’s Stennis Space Center (then known as National Space Technology Laboratories) on May 19, 1975.NASA/Stennis A 1979 image offers a close-up view of a space shuttle main propulsion test article hot fire on the B-2 side of the Thad Cochran Test Stand at NASA’s Stennis Space Center (then known as National Space Technology Laboratories). Main propulsion test article testing involved installing a shuttle fuel tank, a mockup of the shuttle orbiter and the vehicle’s three-engine configuration on the stand, then firing all three engines simultaneously, as would be done during an actual launch.NASA/Stennis As Apollo missions neared an end, plans were underway to drastically reduce the NASA Stennis footprint. Enter the space shuttle. NASA considered three locations to test engines for its new reusable vehicle before selecting NASA Stennis on March 1, 1970, ensuring the center’s future for the next several decades.  
      Space shuttle main engine testing proved challenging as the site transitioned from handling full rocket stages to firing single engines. “A big part of the challenge was the fact that teams were testing an entire engine from the very start,” NASA Test Operations Chief Maury Vander said. “Typically, you begin testing components, then progress to a full engine. Teams had a lot to learn in real time.” 
      NASA Stennis teams also tested the shuttle Main Propulsion Test Article with three engines firing simultaneously. The testing was particularly critical given the first shuttle mission would carry astronauts. 
      NASA Stennis teams worked diligently to demonstrate the shuttle system would operate safely, an effort characterized as one of the site’s finest hours. Following the first shuttle mission in 1981, astronauts Robert Crippen and John Young visited the south Mississippi site. “The effort that you contributed made it possible for us to sit back and ride,” Crippen told NASA Stennis employees. 
      From 1975 to 2009, NASA Stennis tested every main engine to help power 135 shuttle missions that enabled historic missions, such as those that deployed and repaired the Hubble Space Telescope and assembled the International Space Station, enabling its many scientific experiments and spinoff technologies. The site also tested every engine and component upgrade and helped troubleshoot performance issues. It led test campaigns following shuttle accidents to help ensure safe returns to flight. In total, the site conducted 2,307 tests for 820,475.68 seconds of accumulated hot fire. 
      NASA conducts the final test of a space shuttle main engine on the A-2 Test Stand at NASA’s Stennis Space Center on July 29, 2009. The Space Shuttle Program concluded two years later with the STS-135 shuttle mission.  NASA / Stennis An on-stand camera offers a closeup view of the first test of an RS-25 engine on the Fred Haise Test Stand (formerly the A-1 Test Stand) at NASA’s Stennis Space Center on Jan. 9, 2015. RS-25 engines power the core stage of NASA’s powerful SLS (Space Launch System) rocket.NASA/Stennis Crews at NASA’s Stennis Space Center install the first core stage of NASA’s powerful SLS (Space Launch System) on the B-2 side of the Thad Cochran Test Stand on Jan. 21-22, 2020. Following testing, the stage would help launch the Artemis I mission in November 2022.NASA/Stennis NASA conducts a full-duration RS-25 hot fire April 3, 2024, on the Fred Haise Test Stand at NASA’s Stennis Space Center, achieving a major milestone for future Artemis flights of NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket. It marked the final hot fire of a 12-test series to certify production of new RS-25 engines by lead contractor L3Harris (formerly known as Aerojet Rocketdyne) to help power NASA’s SLS rocket on Artemis missions to the Moon and beyond, beginning with Artemis V.NASA/Stennis Even as NASA Stennis tested main engines to power shuttle missions, the site led in testing next-generation engines, including the Fastrac, XRS-2200 linear aerospike, and J-2X. It also developed its E Test Complex, with multiple test stands and cells, to support a range of component and engine test projects, including those of commercial aerospace companies.
      A landmark agreement between NASA Stennis and Aerojet Rocketdyne (now known as L3Harris) in 1998 marked the site’s first test partnership with such a company. “That was the starting point,” said Vander. “Today, we are a preferred partner for multiple companies and test projects, large and small.” 
      NASA Stennis also is testing RS-25 engines and related systems to help power NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket on Artemis missions to the Moon. When the agency travels to Mars, it is expected the missions will launch with engines tested at the Mississippi site as well. 
      “The Gulf Coast of Mississippi helped achieve our space dreams of the past, and NASA Stennis continues supporting today’s dreams,” Bailey said. “It is a true testament to the expertise and dedication of our entire team and the incredible support of surrounding communities and the whole state.” 
      For information about NASA’s Stennis Space Center, visit: 
      Stennis Space Center – NASA 
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      Last Updated Nov 13, 2024 EditorNASA Stennis CommunicationsContactC. Lacy Thompsoncalvin.l.thompson@nasa.gov / (228) 688-3333LocationStennis Space Center Related Terms
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