NASA Will Launch Artificial Star into Earth’s Orbit, Costing $19.5 Million
By Anthony Scott Jun. 21, 2024
According to Futurism, the artificial star will be about the size of a toaster and equipped with eight lasers.
The creation of the star is part of NASA’s $19.5 million space project called Landolt.
The Landolt project aims to help scientists accurately measure real stars in space and are hoping it will assist in studying dark energy.
Per Futurism:
NASA is planning to launch an unusual payload, roughly the size of a toaster and outfitted with eight lasers.
Its job is to imitate stars and other celestial objects like supernovas, Live Science reports, by beaming lasers straight into their instruments back on the surface.
The false star is part of the space agency’s $19.5 million mission dubbed Landolt, and is designed to allow scientists to get more accurate measurements of real stars. Researchers suggest it could even help study dark energy, the mysterious hypothetical form of energy that’s been used to explain why the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate.
“Even with today’s modern instruments, measurements of the true brightness of stars have only been known to a few percent,” said NASA Exoplanet Science Institute deputy director and Caltech astronomer David Ciardi in a statement. “Landolt will enable an improvement in those measurements by more than a factor of ten.”
The launch date of the artificial star will be in 2029.
