Planned UH study
gets NASA recognitionThe UH experiment will look
at neutrinos from a balloon
flying high over Antarctica
An experiment planned by a University of Hawaii-Manoa physicist to detect super-high-energy neutrinos over Antarctica has moved to a fast track as a $35 million NASA "mission of opportunity."
Peter Gorham, associate professor of physics and principal investigator, received word yesterday of a "pretty big upgrade" by NASA for the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna.
It was selected for the space agency's Explorer Program Missions, worth up to $35 million over five years if it gets the go-ahead after the next phase of research.
Gorham and his colleagues had received $8.2 million from NASA and other groups for five years to plan ANITA.
A neutrino, an invisible super-high-energy subatomic particle, is one of the universe's most puzzling fundamental particles. It can be detected only by interactions as it rains down on Earth.
Although a neutrino has the smallest mass of any elementary particle, it could affect how much matter is in the universe and help resolve the question of whether the universe will expand forever or collapse on itself, scientists believe.
The ANITA team plans to fly a balloon with about 36 antennas over the Antarctic continent to measure radio emissions as neutrinos interact with ice, producing mini lightning bolts with "unusual snaps."
"NASA program managers were pleased with the concept we were addressing in R and D (research and development) and decided to move this into what's called the 'explorer program,'" Gorham said.
"It's actually surprising it has happened so early on. Of all the scientific experiments I've been involved in, I've never seen one that caught fire so quickly from inception to actual execution," he added, pointing out the experiment didn't exist before 2000.
More visible, well-funded space missions fall into the explorer program, Gorham said.
"Where before we were really building a Volkswagen version of our experiment -- good solid transportation but not in high style -- now we have an opportunity to do more of a Cadillac version of the experiment with a higher probability of good science."
Gorham, formerly with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, said UH and the laboratory will have major roles in the program, which will have a much higher profile as a NASA mission. Other universities will participate in the science but in less significant roles, he said.
"It will be managed as a NASA spacecraft mission even though we're flying a balloon," he said, noting it will fly at about 120,000 feet. "It's close enough to space that they regard it as their domain even though it never actually gets into orbit or anything."
The instrument probably will be built at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with UH collaborating and developing radio frequencies and antennas, Gorham said.
The 36 antennas, each about 3 feet across at the mouth, will be stacked in a cluster about 20 feet high, he said.
"It's quite enormous. The latest version looks like a Grateful Dead speaker," Gorham said.
Antarctica was chosen as the best site for the experiment because it's transparent to radio waves and the antenna array can listen simultaneously to almost all the ice beneath the balloon.
Shigenobu Matsuno and Marc Rosen, Gorham's colleagues in the UH Physics and Astronomy Department, are en route to Antarctica for a preliminary test flight this year.
ANITA-LITE, a prototype of the ANITA instrument, will be flown on a NASA scientific balloon from McMurdo Base with two radio antennas and electronics to amplify radio signals from the ice.
Gorham was planning to leave next week for the Antarctica test, but has delayed his departure until Nov. 21 to go to Washington for a briefing on the new phase of research.
If the tests are successful, he hopes to fly his experiment over the continent in the summer of 2006.
