In this computer model, the OSIRIS-REx satellite is seen as it will appear on Sept. 24, 2023, when it will pass by the Earth and will drop a capsule containing a sample from an asteroid. The sample will make a parachute landing at the Utah Test and Training Range in Tooele County. (Gene Payne, OpenSpace)
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SALT LAKE CITY – Do you want to go to Mars? Or how about a visit to the James Webb Space Telescope? A virtual, real-time visit to these places is happening through a project at the University of Utah’s Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute.
The project, funded in part by NASA, brings scientifically accurate visualizations of objects in the celestial sphere, including planets, satellites and other NASA missions.
Enabling outer space research from home is one of the many projects at the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute. The institute is contributing to the development of an open-source software program called OpenSpace. This downloadable program allows anyone to follow the real-time, or past and future trajectory and location of numerous objects in outer space.
“It’s a very open-ended framework for being able to show any kind of space content, telescopes, data from probes, missions that have been sent out and anything from planetary-scale all the way out to showing where the galaxies, the known galaxies are located in the universe,” says Gene Payne, a research software developer at the institute.
OpenSpace is widely used by planetariums, museums, college professors and even by YouTube creators. Because it is an open-source software it is free to use and there’s no telling who is using it because anyone can.
Chuck Hansen is the principal investigator of the project at the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute. “The overarching goal of the project is to bring NASA data to the masses,” Hansen says, “to show the public what NASA is doing with their mission data.”
“It’s also part of an educational push,” Payne says.
The institute is developing OpenSpace in collaboration with the other two formal partners of the project: New York University and Linköping University in Sweden.
NASA’s invitation to join the development of OpenSpace came to the University of Utah, Hansen says, based on the university’s reputation in computer graphics and scientific visualization. This is where the University of Utah makes its principal contribution.
The University of Utah has “quite a good history in graphics,” Payne says.
Another part of the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute’s contribution has been adding additional features to the software.
Developers at the U. have made it possible for OpenSpace to “read and play the (NASA) mission back in time … or play it forward. We can see where a mission is at, at a specific time.”
“The really important thing here is that there are not artist impression renderings,” Payne says. “Everything is scientifically accurate.”
James Webb Space Telescope
The James Webb Space Telescope, launched on Christmas Day 2021, is in a solar orbit a million miles from Earth.
The 14,000-pound telescope always stays behind a solar shield that is 69 feet by 46 feet, or roughly the size of a tennis court.
This shield keeps the telescope constantly cool and less affected by the infrared rays of the sun. This allows for the telescope’s own infrared images to come back clean, Payne says.
Through OpenSpace, users can track the telescope from its location at the Lagrange point, or L2. The Lagrange point is an ideal place for a telescope to orbit the sun, and enjoy a balance of the gravitational forces of the sun and the Earth, allowing for the telescope to use minimal fuel.
Users of OpenSpace can follow the telescope from launch, watch the telescope unfold its golden mirror and reach its destination. “It uses actual NASA data for positions in time. It’s the actual trajectory and where it’s going,” Payne said.
The result is the stunning images that the Hubble Telescope does not have the capability to capture.
Parachuting from an asteroid down to Utah
One satellite launched by NASA, called OSIRIS-REx, is set to drop off a valuable payload down into Tooele County in 2023.
OSIRIS-REx — or Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer — was launched back in 2016 and made a quick flyby of the Earth in 2017 to build up speed before it headed out deeper into space.
Its mission is a NASA-first: to acquire a sample of an asteroid and bring the sample back to Earth.
The target was Bennu, a near-Earth asteroid. The satellite reached Bennu in 2018, where it spent a couple of years in orbit and took some rubble from the asteroid’s surface. Cameras built by a team at Utah State University were onboard the satellite, which helped in navigating around and landing on the asteroid.
In May 2021, the OSIRIS-REx began its journey back to Earth. It will pass over Earth on Sept. 24, 2023, when that rubble will be delivered to Earth and drop from space onto the Utah Training and Test Range in Tooele County.
“There’s a little bit of drama there, too. One of these previous missions where it was returning an actual sample from an asteroid, parachuting correctly down, but it hit hard, and kinda cracked the canister open and contaminated the sample,” Payne said .
After the drop-off from far above Utah, ORISIS-REx will begin an even longer mission to the asteroid Apophis.
Artemis I
Like many space watchers, the team at the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute has been looking forward to the launch of the Artemis rocket, which is a major step for the return of astronauts to the surface of the moon.
Faced with technical issues, faulty equipment, and a hurricane, Artemis I has been delayed multiple times.
When Artemis I does eventually launch, the entire trip will be recaptured on OpenSpace.
“When Artemis missions go to the moon,” Hansen says, “OpenSpace is going to be ready to show the details of that.”
So, for that trip to Mars, it doesn’t need to just be a flyby.
“We have terrain images available, for Earth obviously, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, all the planets that we’ve flown probes by or used telescopes to get images of the terrain,” Payne said.
Or, if staying closer to home is your preferred itinerary, you have that option.
“We have a satellite in orbit around Earth, every day it takes pictures of the overall globe. … These are the actual cloud formations as they existed yesterday,” Payne said.
You can learn more about the OpenSpace project and download the latest version of the software at the OpenSpace website.
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