{"id":12379,"date":"2020-07-02T23:53:18","date_gmt":"2020-07-02T15:53:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/coronavirus-work-stoppage-likely-to-delay-launch-of-nasa-x-ray-astronomy-mission\/"},"modified":"2020-07-02T23:53:18","modified_gmt":"2020-07-02T15:53:18","slug":"coronavirus-work-stoppage-likely-to-delay-launch-of-nasa-x-ray-astronomy-mission","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/coronavirus-work-stoppage-likely-to-delay-launch-of-nasa-x-ray-astronomy-mission\/","title":{"rendered":"Coronavirus work stoppage likely to delay launch of NASA X-ray astronomy mission"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Artist\u2019s concept of the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A nearly three-month stoppage of on-site work due to concerns about the spread of the coronavirus at NASA\u2019s Marshall Space Fight Center in Alabama is expected to push back the launch of the IXPE X-ray astronomy satellite from May 2021 until some time later next year, a senior space agency official said.<\/p>\n

The Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, or IXPE, mission is assigned to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from NASA\u2019s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. IXPE is designed to measure the polarization of high-energy cosmic X-rays, collecting data that will allow astronomers to study the unseen environment around black holes, neutron stars and pulsars, the extremely dense collapsed remains left behind by exploding stars.<\/p>\n

Astronomers hope IXPE will reveal the spin of black holes, and yield new discoveries about the extreme magnetic fields around a special type of neutron star called magnetars.<\/p>\n

In order to obtain the sensitivity required for the X-ray research, the IXPE observatory will host three identical X-ray telescopes that will be extended after launch on a 13-foot (4-meter) boom. Built at Marshall Space Flight Center, the mirror module assemblies at the end of the boom will focus X-rays onto detectors provided by ASI, the Italian space agency.<\/p>\n

Paul Hertz, head of NASA\u2019s astrophysics division, said June 23 that work on assembling the mirrors at Marshall was delayed after the space center in Huntsville, Alabama, was closed to all non-essential personnel in March amid escalating numbers of coronavirus cases in the area.<\/p>\n

After developing new safety protocols, teams resume in-person work on the mirrors in late May, Hertz said in a presentation to NASA\u2019s Astrophysics Advisory Committee.<\/p>\n

Hertz said IXPE was \u201cprobably the most seriously impacted\u201d by the coronavirus pandemic of all of NASA\u2019s Explorer-class missions, a set of small-to-medium size scientific spacecraft designed to pursue questions in astrophysics and solar physics.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason is COVID hit right when we were integrating the mirrors down at the Marshall Space Flight Center, and that is the critical path,\u201d Hertz said. \u201cSo when Marshall shut down for three months, nothing happened on the critical path for three months.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some work on IXPE has continued, Hertz said.<\/p>\n

Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colorado, kept working on the IXPE spacecraft bus, which will host the X-ray mirrors and detectors. And Italian scientists providing the mission\u2019s X-ray detectors finished their work and prepared them for shipment to the United States, once international travel restrictions allow Italian team members to accompany the hardware to help integrate it into the spacecraft.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe collective safety of our IXPE team continues to be the number one priority,\u201d said Molly Porter, a NASA spokesperson. \u201cWe\u2019re slowly and methodically resuming mission-critical work that cannot be done off site. This includes several tasks for the in-house production of IXPE\u2019s mirror modules at NASA\u2019s Marshall Space Flight Center.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are still assessing COVID-19\u2019s impacts to cost and schedule,\u201d Porter said.<\/p>\n

The team at Marshall will assemble, calibrate and test the mirrors before shipping the flight units to Ball Aerospace for integration on the spacecraft, Hertz said.<\/p>\n

NASA also anticipates a budget impact to the IXPE mission from the delay.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo IXPE did have a three-month delay,\u201d Hertz said. \u201cThis happened right at the peak burn rate for IXPE, and we would have completed work and rolled staff off, but the work didn\u2019t complete, so we didn\u2019t roll staff. So not only was it a schedule hit, it was also a budget hit.\u201d<\/p>\n

NASA selected IXPE to become the next in the agency\u2019s line of Small Explorer missions in January 2017. At the time, NASA said the IXPE mission would cost $188 million, covering development of the spacecraft and its X-ray telescope payload, a launch vehicle, and two years of operations.<\/p>\n

NASA last year signed a $50.3 million contract with SpaceX to launch the IXPE satellite on a previously-flown Falcon 9 booster from the Kennedy Space Center. According to Porter, IXPE is currently predicted to weigh around 743 pounds (337 kilograms) at launch, and will deploy off the Falcon 9 rocket into an unusual 335-mile-high (540-kilometer) equatorial orbit with an inclination of 0.2 degrees.<\/p>\n

The orbit hugging the equator will minimize the X-ray instrument\u2019s exposure to radiation in the South Atlantic Anomaly, the region where the inner Van Allen radiation belt comes closest to Earth\u2019s surface.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that certainly IXPE was the most impacted (of NASA\u2019s Explorer missions) because of the timing of when work stopped,\u201d Hertz said. \u201cThey were at the worst time for us to stop work of all of our small missions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
File photo of a Falcon 9 rocket taking off from pad 39A at NASA\u2019s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Credit: SpaceX<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NASA\u2019s other Explorer-class missions being prepared for launch have experienced fewer impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

GUSTO, a high-altitude balloon-borne infrared telescope to study the interstellar medium, remains on track for launch from Antarctica in December 2021. NASA\u2019s SPHEREx satellite is scheduled for launch in 2024 on a mission to survey galaxies and search for clues about the formation of ices that could seed life on planets.<\/p>\n

Hertz said two major subcontractors working on the SPHEREx mission could not start work on schedule due to the coronavirus pandemic. That caused some delays, but the SPHEREx mission is still relatively early in development, not in the peak phase of assembly and testing like IXPE.<\/p>\n

It is too early to know how the coronavirus-related delays might affect NASA\u2019s budget for astrophysics missions, Hertz said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t actually know what the final impact will be because we don\u2019t know what the trajectory is for the country and all of our industry partners and academic partners for recovering from the pandemic and getting back to work,\u201d Hertz said. \u201cSo for some missions, it\u2019s easy to see like IXPE because there\u2019s a single path right now as we\u2019re integrating it up.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the Explorers, we\u2019ll be able to handle the impacts within the resources that I think we have within the program,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Hertz said he believes NASA\u2019s budget for the James Webb Space Telescope, which has cost more to develop than any space science mission in history, also has \u201cadequate\u201d funding reserves \u201cto encompass all possible predictions of what the COVID impact is.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope that doesn\u2019t come back to bite me, but right now it does look like we have in place appropriate reserves on Webb,\u201d Hertz said.<\/p>\n

NASA established a new budget for Webb in 2018 that covered an expected development cost of $8.8 billion. That does not include international contributions or operating costs after the observatory\u2019s launch.<\/p>\n

Like IXPE, Webb experienced a slowdown in work due to the coronavirus. Teams worked at about 40 percent efficiency for several months, but starting staffing at higher levels in June to prepare for a series of key ground tests later this year.<\/p>\n

Webb\u2019s launch is expected to be delayed from its previous target of March 30, 2021, but NASA has not yet released an updated schedule.<\/p>\n

More than half of the this year\u2019s budget for NASA\u2019s astrophysics program goes toward the James Webb Space Telescope and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, formerly known as WFIRST. Those are NASA\u2019s next two \u201cgreat observatories.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Roman telescope is scheduled for launch in 2025.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn Roman, I\u2019m just unsure of what the impact (from COVID-19) will be because Roman is doing fine today, but there\u2019s some work that\u2019s not getting done today, so it\u2019s being deferred into the future,\u201d Hertz said. \u201cBut that work is funded. So whether we\u2019re just redistributing the work and the money, and it\u2019s not really a cost growth, or whether there\u2019s inefficiencies that amount to something substantial on Roman, I think it\u2019s too early for us to tell.\u201d<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Artist\u2019s concept of the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer. Credit: NASA A nearly three-month stoppage of on-site work due to concerns about the spread of the coronavirus at NASA\u2019s Marshall Space Fight Center in Alabama is expected to push back the launch of the IXPE X-ray astronomy satellite from May 2021 until some time later next […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1847,1661,1690,1665,1975,2010,479,2188],"class_list":["post-12379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-asi","tag-astronomy","tag-astrophysics","tag-ball-aerospace","tag-black-holes","tag-coronavirus","tag-falcon-9","tag-italy"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12379"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}