NASA Approves New Experiment To Be Conducted At NKU

Oct. 12, 2022 - NASA has approved a new project, the Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder on the International Space Station (TIGERISS) experiment concept, to be conducted at NKU and five other universities, which aims to answer out-of-this-world questions about elements and matter in space as part of the NASA Astrophysics Pioneers program. 

Joining NKU on this project will be Howard University, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Maryland – Baltimore County, and Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Brian Rauch, a scientist at Washington University, will lead the project. 

“I’m incredibly excited for this project and the opportunity to work with our outstanding students in such important work,” Dr. Scott Nutter, Regents Professor in the Department of Physics, Geology & Engineering Technology, said. “A project like this affords students the opportunity to participate in cutting-edge science at a national level alongside top researchers in the field.” 

The goal of the project is to better understand which stellar processes (i.e., supernovas) produce which elements. TIGERISS measures the abundances of the heaviest elements (such as hydrogen, helium and lithium) in cosmic rays, which are fast-moving nuclei of atoms from other parts of the galaxy. The relative amount of one kind of heavy element compared to another provides insight into their origins. 

Students at NKU will be responsible for overseeing the creation and use of an instrument computer simulation, led by Dr. Nutter. The simulation is used in the design phase for trade studies of various instrument configurations, and later in interpreting the data. 

“The computer simulation creates a virtual version of the instrument, then throws virtual cosmic rays at it and records the virtual response,” Dr. Nutter said. “We can compare that response to what we see in the data from the space station to reduce uncertainty in our conclusions about the origin of the heaviest elements.” 

TIGERISS is an evolution of the TIGER and SuperTIGER balloon-borne instruments also created by scientists in Washington University in St. Louis over the past three decades. Both instruments flew multiple times on high-altitude balloons reaching heights of over 20 miles, above most, but not all, of Earth’s atmosphere. Each flight refined the detector design and created a body of compelling scientific results that pushed the limits of what balloon-borne detectors could achieve. 

Balloons can only stay up at most for a month or two, and although the balloons are very high in the atmosphere, there remains a non-negligible amount of atmosphere that interferes with arriving cosmic rays. On the International Space Station, that “atmospheric overburden” is absent, and without that interference, the TIGERISS experiment can make higher-resolution measurements and detect heavy particles that wouldn’t be possible from a scientific balloon. The experiment could last a year or more, much longer than the length of a balloon flight, allowing researchers to measure extremely rare individual elements as heavy as lead. 

For more information on the TIGERISS project and other NASA Astrophysics Pioneers Projects, click here. 

To learn more about programs and offerings in the NKU Department of Physics, Geology & Engineering Technology, visit its website.