{"680480":{"#nid":"680480","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Turning to CubeSats in the Search for Life Thousands of Light-Years from Earth","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EA new NASA-funded project will have Georgia Tech aerospace engineers developing new technology to one day study planets outside our solar system.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIt\u0027s a $10 million joint mission led by the University of Michigan called STARI \u2014 STarlight Acquisition and Reflection toward Interferometry. Georgia Tech\u2019s engineers will build the propulsion systems for a pair of briefcase-sized CubeSats that will fly in orbit a few hundred yards away from one another, bouncing starlight back and forth.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe technology could be used someday to better understand if any known exoplanets are capable of supporting life as we know it.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EInterferometry is already used to study stars, gas clouds, and galaxies. Instead of using one large telescope, several smaller telescopes work as a team. The machines swap starlight to create higher resolution images than are possible from a single telescope.\u0026nbsp;\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003EScientists and engineers have recently proposed using interferometry to locate exoplanets.\u0026nbsp;\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003ESTARI will determine if the same type of coordination and light transmission can be done using less expensive CubeSats.\u0026nbsp;\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/coe.gatech.edu\/news\/2025\/02\/turning-cubesats-search-life-thousands-light-years-earth\u0022\u003ERead the entire story on the College of Engineering website.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":"","format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":[{"value":"Georgia Tech plays a starring role in NASA\u2019s STARI mission to determine if telescope technology that studies exoplanets can be implemented in briefcase-sized spacecraft. "}],"field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EA new NASA-funded project will have Georgia Tech aerospace engineers developing new technology to one day study planets outside our solar system.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIt\u0027s a $10 million joint mission led by the University of Michigan called STARI \u2014 STarlight Acquisition and Reflection toward Interferometry. Georgia Tech\u2019s engineers will build the propulsion systems for a pair of briefcase-sized CubeSats that will fly in orbit a few hundred yards away from one another, bouncing starlight back and forth.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"A new NASA-funded project will have Georgia Tech aerospace engineers developing new technology to one day study planets outside our solar system. "}],"uid":"27560","created_gmt":"2025-02-13 20:15:07","changed_gmt":"2025-02-13 20:42:50","author":"Jason Maderer","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","location":"Atlanta, GA","dateline":{"date":"2025-02-13T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2025-02-13T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"676286":{"id":"676286","type":"image","title":"STARI CubeSats","body":null,"created":"1739477448","gmt_created":"2025-02-13 20:10:48","changed":"1739477516","gmt_changed":"2025-02-13 20:11:56","alt":"a rendering of two CubeSats in space, beaming light","file":{"fid":"260040","name":"stari_concept.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/2025\/02\/13\/stari_concept.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/2025\/02\/13\/stari_concept.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":97742,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/2025\/02\/13\/stari_concept.jpg?itok=eC-29PXQ"}}},"media_ids":["676286"],"groups":[{"id":"1188","name":"Research Horizons"}],"categories":[{"id":"136","name":"Aerospace"}],"keywords":[{"id":"188776","name":"go-research"},{"id":"187915","name":"go-researchnews"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"193657","name":"Space Research Initiative"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EJason Maderer\u003Cbr\u003ECollege of Engineering\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:maderer@gatech.edu\u0022\u003Emaderer@gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["maderer@gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}