No one likes to be alone – and since human beings love to anthropomorphize literally everything, there’s a good chance you assume that goes for giant space telescopes, too.
Don’t worry any longer though, because even though NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has been alone for a year and a half, it’s finally getting some company.
Image Credit: NASA
The company – or adorable “sidekick – is a toaster-sized cubesat that will join the $8.5 million space mission called the “Monitoring Activity from Nearby sTars with uv Imaging and Spectroscopy” (MANTIS).
It’s set to launch in 2026 and will observe the night sky in ultraviolet light, including Extreme UV (EUV) light. This is meant to help it study stars that exist dozens of light-years from earth and will join research gathered on exoplanets by the Webb.
“We proposed MANTIS as a kind of ultraviolet sidekick that will follow JWST and look wherever it’s looking, filling in this important piece of context on the stellar environments in which these planets live.”
Image Credit: NASA
Planets tend to release EUV when being subjected to radiation from a host star, but until now, scientists like David Wilson and Briana Indahl, two members of the science team, have struggled to measure it until now.
“For a lot of stars, this is going to be the first time we’ve seen what they look like in the extreme ultraviolet. We want to understand how this flux of UV light coming from stars affects the atmospheres of planets and even their habitability.”
If the truth is out there, it sounds like these two little devices might be the ones to find it.
Working together, of course.
Source: https://twistedsifter.com/2023/07/nasa-set-to-give-the-james-webb-a-cute-little-friend/