Mini-Euso, the telescope on the International Space Station that has already mapped 24,000 meteorites

Installed in 2019, it has been recording cosmic, atmospheric and terrestrial UV emissions for five years.

Rome – The Earth’s atmosphere is constantly bombarded by celestial bodies that, due to their friction with the atmosphere itself, heat up and burn, emitting radiation. These objects, which are usually called “Meteors, They are typically observed by ground-based telescopes to reconstruct their mass, orientation, and flow by detecting the light they emitted in the visible spectrum. The opportunity to Analysis of these celestial bodies from space It offers significant advantages, including the ability to carry out a surveillance campaign with a wide field of view and long duration, regardless of the weather conditions on the ground.

The Mini-Eeuso telescope has mapped 24,000 meteors.

the Jim-Eosu Collaboration The potential of this approach has recently been confirmed, by publishing it in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. Mapping 24,000 meteorites It was first systematically observed from space in the ultraviolet range using the Mini-Euso detector (a new multi-wavelength imaging instrument for the Extreme Cosmic Space Observatory). Eosu Mini TelescopeAs the Italian Space Agency explained. It was installed in 2019 on the International Space Station (ISS). Over the past five years, the emission of ultraviolet radiation of cosmic, atmospheric and terrestrial origin has been recorded from a window inside the Zvezda module, directed towards the Earth, which allows measuring this radiation.

Mini-Euso is a telescope of the Italian Space Agency.

Mini-Euso is a telescope of the Italian Space Agency, developed thanks to an international collaboration led by Infn. ASI has selected the telescope for the Luca Parmitano Beyond mission. The Italian collaboration Mini-Euso involves the Infn departments of Rome Tor Vergata and Turin, the Infn National Laboratories in Frascati, the Infn Astrophysical Observatory in Turin, the Physics Department of the University of Rome Tor Vergata and the University of Turin, Kaiser Italia and the active contribution of ASI researchers and technicians.

He explained that the innovative technology of ultraviolet-sensitive detectors Dario Barghini (Inaf, Infn and University of Turin)responsible for the analysis – together with the improved data acquisition system to make observations on different time scales, which made it possible to capture the light produced by the emissions of these small bodies that crossed the Earth’s atmosphere at very high speed, to reconstruct their properties in terms of direction, light emission and mass.”

“This allowed us to – Marco Casolino (Infn), the mission’s principal investigator, added: – Not only to provide a systematic catalogue of meteorites, but also to confirm models relating to the expected flux of these cosmic bodies, through an innovative approach independent of ground-based observation campaigns.

The published results are based onAnalysis of the first 40 data collection sessions. To date, Mini-Euso has carried out more than a hundred sessions. “The data collected – commented Valerio Vagili, project scientist of the Italian Space Agency for Mini-Euso – could contain other useful information to further test these unified models and determine the most reliable ones. To this end, the researchers continue to analyze the data not only to improve the results already obtained, integrating the catalog with the latest observations, but also to investigate whether it is possible to identify the presence of atypical events among the data, such as meteorites of interstellar origin, or evidence of new, extremely dense states of matter, predicted but not yet observed, commonly referred to as nucleoliths.

Thanks to the analysis of the data collected Potential new findings are expected to become available to the scientific community.“The results obtained by the analysis of the data collected by the telescope on the ISS confirm the national skills in the development and operation of this type of instrument for the ISS,” concluded Marino Crisconio, Mini-Euso Programme Manager at the Italian Space Agency. “Measuring ultraviolet radiation from space. Placing the instrument in an orbiting laboratory together with a dense and prestigious network of international collaborations also offers the opportunity to conduct scientific investigations in diverse and complementary fields such as Earth observation, the study of the solar system, fundamental physics, all the way to applications of interest to space security such as tracking space debris.”