NASA launches small satellite, will reveal the secrets of cosmic explosions

Washington: NASA on Friday launched a small-sized satellite for the International Space Station (ISS). Its purpose is to uncover the secrets of cosmic explosions. The satellite BurstCube is en route to the orbiting lab on SpaceX’s 30th Commercial Replenishment Service mission. It lifted off at 4:55 pm local time on March 21 (Thursday) from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. “After arriving at the ISS, BurstCube will be unpacked and later released into orbit, where it will detect and study brief gamma-ray bursts of high-energy light,” NASA said. “BurstCube may be small,” said Jeremy Perkins, BurstCube’s principal investigator at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, N.K. But in addition to investigating these extreme events, it is testing new technology and providing valuable experience for early career astronomers and aerospace engineers.” BurstCube detects gamma rays with energies ranging from 50 thousand to 1 million electron volts. Current gamma-ray missions capture only about 70 percent of the sky. But with BurstCube, more bursts could be detected by combining gravitational wave detection.