Designed by a Physics Graduate, Device Lifted Off in New Zealand on a Gigantic Balloon
05/05/2025
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LOWELL, Mass. – A multichannel camera designed by UMass Lowell hitched a ride on a NASA mission Saturday, May 3, successfully lifting off from Wanaka Airport in New Zealand.
The research is part of the space agency’s Scientific Balloon Program, which is testing NASA’s super-pressure balloon technology. The launch was one of two missions in which a stadium-sized, heavy-lift balloon traveled to the Southern Hemisphere’s mid-latitudes for a flight of 45 days or more.
While the missions are designed to evaluate the balloons’ performance, the second flight’s payload included the UMass Lowell camera studying how Earth’s atmosphere produces natural light emissions known as airglow. Such phenomena offer a window into the world of how the cosmos works, according to the researchers.
“These are the experiments you need to do in preparation for the day we could confidently predict space weather,” said UMass Lowell physics Professor Supriya Chakrabarti, who leads the university’s Lowell Center for Space Science and Technology (LoCSST).
Heading up the design and construction of the camera was Sunip Mukherjee, who received his doctoral degree in physics from UMass Lowell and now works for the center.
“From measuring these kinds of emissions, you can see how much oxygen there is,” he said. “This tells us about how the ionosphere is evolving. The ionosphere is deeply tied with the rest of the atmosphere. It’s in our interest to understand it better.”
Saturday’s launch was the third time the camera was included in a NASA mission, though the previous two excursions were shorter duration flights, typically of 24 hours. Mukherjee, of Lowell, will head up the analysis of the images and data the camera collects.
“I have made the instrument capable of talking to me no matter where it is or where I am in the world,” he said.
The researchers will continue to refine the camera to one day be incorporated into a satellite, according to Chakrabarti, who called the instrument both “simple” and “robust.”
The project is just the latest NASA mission that involved UMass Lowell. Over the past decade, LoCSST has launched technologies for imaging planets beyond the solar system and a miniature satellite, which was designed and built by UMass Lowell students, then released into orbit by astronauts at the International Space Station. In addition, the center provides industry partners and other collaborators with design, fabrication, testing, simulation and validation facilities for miniature satellites and satellite constellations, as well as innovations in advanced imaging optics, sensors, materials, power, cooling and navigation systems, communications electronics and antennas, and other systems essential to space missions.
For students interested in space science, UMass Lowell offers expanded academic programs in physics and engineering. These include an aerospace studies minor for undergraduates and an aerospace sciences option for doctoral candidates in physics and aerospace engineering.
“We are preparing students to enter the job pipeline in the field and to take their place as the next generation of aerospace leaders,” Chakrabarti said.