礼貌的照片Neutrinos are on the short list of the biggest mysteries in fundamental 物理, and 威奇托 State University researchers are taking a lead role in investigating them.
“The unsolved question right now is ‘Why do they have mass? 它们是怎么有质量的?’” 说 Jonathan Folkerts, 威奇托 State graduate student. “当中微子第一次出现的时候 thought of, we figured they had to be massless, but they do some things that mean 它们必须有质量.”
In late September, Folkerts, Jarred Novak and Trent English presented papers on the design of their neutrino detector prototype at the International Astronautical Congress in Paris, representing the 美国国家航空航天局-funded Solar Neutrino Orbiting Laboratory Detector 开发项目.
The grant project, “Cube-sat Space Flight Test of a Neutrino Detector,” will allow Dr. Nick Solomey’s team to design a solar probe to look for 中微子. Solomey, 物理 professor at 威奇托 State, and his research collaborators earned a $2 million grant from 美国国家航空航天局 in 2021 to improve a future solar mission's technological readiness level (TRL).
“We are trying to fly a detector outside of where the earth is shielding us,” Folkerts 说. “The earth’s magnetic field does a great job of protecting us from these particles. When you get in a small region outside the north and south magnetic poles, you are 不保护. We are going to be flying above those poles in those regions looking for background signals that we can study, so that when we design a future mission that can go close to the sun, we’ll have a very good idea what sort of background 那里一定会有噪音.”
Folkerts is pursuing his doctoral degree in applied mathematics. 诺瓦克正在追查 物理学硕士学位. English is a 威奇托 State graduate with a master’s 物理学学位.
礼貌的图形Neutrinos are miniscule subatomic particles that are similar to electrons, but have 没有电荷，质量几乎可以忽略不计. Understanding 中微子 holds the keys to understanding the structure of the universe 质量的起源. 根据 中微子.fnal.政府, 中微子 are the second most abundant fundamental particle in the universe, and the sun is the source of most of these local 中微子.
Folkerts’ talk focused on testing the science payload and the science detector.
Novak presented on the cosmic ray radiation shield he developed to protect the detector. The shield is made of tungsten and epoxy plastic and designed to burn up upon reentry. He majored in mechanical engineering and 物理 as an undergraduate at 威奇托 State and 说 that background is crucial to his work on the neutrino project.
“When I first got approached, I understood radiation,” he 说. 我想了想 物理. 我想到了工程学. I took polymers and my metals classes and 诸如此类. It made it a little easier for me to understand. 因为 the 物理 behind it, I knew what the radiation was and I knew how to do it. 这是 关键概念.”
Novak can control the density of the shield by adding or removing materials to meet 重量或屏蔽要求.
“这是第一次，”他说. “No other cube-sat mission will have shielding, and if there is shielding, this is the first one that is destructible.”
The detector is powered by solar panels and will ride on a rocket, along with other 项目. Work started in 2019 and the two-year mission is scheduled to launch in 2024.
