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NASA will repair the NICER telescope on the ISS with a specially designed patch kit during the spacewalk. The telescope, which is critical for studying neutron stars and
NASA will repair the NICER telescope on the ISS with a specially designed patch kit during the spacewalk. The telescope, which is critical for studying neutron stars and X-ray events, was damaged in May 2023, prompting the rapid design and testing of a solution. The upcoming mission will make NICER the first astronaut-operated X-ray telescope and expand its ability to conduct groundbreaking scientific research.
NASA will deliver a set of patches to the NICER (Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer) X-ray telescope on the International Space Station for Northrop Grumman’s 21st commercial resupply mission. Cosmonauts will fly into space to complete the repairs.
NICER, located near the starboard side of the space station’s solar array, was damaged in May 2023. The mission team delivered the patch kit to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston in May 2024 so it could be prepared and packaged for a future resupply mission.
“It’s incredible that in just one year we were able to diagnose the problem and then design, build, test and propose a solution,” said Steve Kenyon, NICER principal engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We’re very excited to see patches deployed during future spacewalks, return to a more regular work schedule and continue to do groundbreaking science.”
From its vantage point aboard the washing machine-sized NICER station, it scans the X-ray sky. It has precisely measured the extremely dense remnants of stars called neutron stars, which contain the densest material that scientists can directly observe. It has also searched for mysterious fast radio bursts, observed comets in our solar system, and collected data on Earth’s upper atmosphere. But in May 2023, NICER discovered a “light leak” that was letting unwanted sunlight into the telescope.
Photos taken at the station showed several areas of damage to NICER’s heat shields. The shields are 500 times thinner than a human hair and filter out infrared, ultraviolet, and visible light while still allowing X-rays to pass through. These cover each of NICER’s 56 X-ray concentrators, arrays of 24 nested circular mirrors designed to direct X-rays to their respective detectors. Above each hub and shroud is an umbrella with a small gap between them. The sunshades are divided into six inner shelves that resemble a sliced pie.
The most extensive damage to the shields is about the size of a typical U.S. postage stamp. Other areas are closer in size to pinheads. During daylight hours, station damage would allow sunlight to reach the detectors, saturating the sensors and interfering with NICER measurements. The mission team has changed its daytime observing strategy to mitigate the impact. The damage does not affect nighttime observations.
“NICER is not designed for maintenance or repair,” said Keith Gendreau, the mission’s principal investigator at Goddard. “It’s set up by a robot, and we operate it remotely. When we decided to explore the possibility of repairing the most severely damaged areas in the heat shields, we needed to find a method that would use existing parts of the telescope and the station’s instrument suites. We couldn’t have done this without the support and cooperation of our colleagues at Johnson and the entire space station program.”
The solution was simple. The team designed pieces that would slide over the sunshades, each shaped like a piece of pie. A tab on the bottom of each pad would become the gap between the bottom of the sunshades and the top of the heat shield, holding it in place.
Astronauts will wear five patches during spacewalks. These will cover the most critical damaged areas and block sunlight that could affect NICER’s X-ray measurements.
The repair kit includes a total of 12 patches, with spares available if needed. Astronauts will carry the patches in a rectangular frame with two spare sunshades inside the patches.
“NICER will be the first X-ray telescope to be serviced by astronauts in orbit, and only the fourth scientific observatory to be repaired, joining a series of missions such as NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope,” said Charles Baker, NICER project systems engineer at Goddard. “It’s been amazing to see how the patchwork kit has come together over the past year. NICER has taught us so many amazing things about space, and we look forward to the next step in its journey.”
The Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) is an X-ray astronomy instrument aboard the International Space Station (ISS) focused on the study of neutron stars, including pulsars. Part of NASA’s NICER research program, the program aims to measure the extreme physical properties of neutron stars to improve our understanding of their dense interiors. It also supports the SEXTANT experiment, which is testing pulsar-based navigation for spacecraft and demonstrating the practical application of its scientific discoveries.
Source: Port Altele
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