On the ocean off the southeast coast of the United States, there is a place known as the "Devil's Triangle of Bermuda", where more than 30 aircraft, more than 100 ships and more than 1,000 people have mysteriously disappeared. Is there an answer to the bizarre events in Bermuda now? Obviously, this is still an unsolved mystery.
Bermuda triangle
There is also such a triangle in space, known as "Space Bermuda", and many satellites launched from Earth are affected by it.
What kind of existence is Space Bermuda? What will happen to satellites under the influence of space Bermuda? Why is it weird to say that Japanese satellites disintegrate in space? What does the disintegration of the Hitomi satellite mean for astronomy?
Japanese Hitomi satellite
Next, let's understand whether the strange incident of the direct control of the Japanese "Hitomi" satellite failing to break and disintegrate is related to space Bermuda.
Space Bermuda
Space Bermuda is located in the southeast of the Earth's "Bermuda Devil Triangle", that is, above the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Brazil, hundreds of kilometers from the Earth.
Van Allen radiation belt
Here, scientists have detected a ring-shaped inner radiation belt, the closest to Earth, known as the Van Allen Radiation Belt. Inside are high-energy particles in outer space attracted by the Earth's magnetic field, especially solar wind particles.
The creation of the Van Allen radiation belt is related to the uneven distribution of the Earth's magnetic field, so in this area, the Earth's magnetic field will become very weak, which is not a good thing for satellites.
Artistic imagination of the Earth's magnetic field under the action of the solar wind
Many satellites will be equipped with electromagnets in order to be able to control the flight posture under the action of the geomagnet. But when satellites pass by here, weak magnetic fields can make satellites run out of control.
And these artificial satellites will also be bombarded by high-energy particles in them, resulting in blurred vision, just like the scene seen by highly myopic patients without glasses. If these energetic particles hit the wires of the large-scale integrated circuits on the artificial satellite, they will cause a short circuit crash on the notebook that detects the data.
Satellites and even the International Space Station had to avoid the Van Allen radiation belt
The failure of the early launch of artificial satellites is basically related to this space Bermuda.
- Space Bermuda's impact on spacecraft
The Van Allen radiation belt speculated and calculated by scientists should have two layers, the inner belt should be 1500-5000 kilometers from The Earth, of which mainly high-energy protons. The outer belt is 13,000-20,000 kilometers away from the Earth and is mainly composed of high-energy electrons.
Spacecraft
Obviously, this space Bermuda is not only located in the Inner Van Allen Radiation Belt, but also only about 200 kilometers from the Earth, and the damage of high-energy protons to artificial satellites can be imagined.
Since the 1950s, there have been many cases of sputniks passing through the Space Bermuda region malfunctioning. The Globalstar satellite launched by the United States in 2007 failed because of its passage through this area, and in 2012, the SpaceX CRS-1 Dragon spacecraft docking the International Space Station also had a brief anomaly.
CRS-1 is approaching the International Space Station
Due to the location of this space Bermuda, the latitude is really low, and the area of its design is very wide, many spacecraft will pass through this place, so scientists must strengthen the CPU and circuitry of these spacecraft, and also install additional protective shields on the International Space Station.
For some detectors that pass here almost every day, such as Hubble, they will choose to turn off the observation equipment to avoid the influence of these high-energy protons and particles.
Hubble Space Telescope
The Japanese "Hitomi" satellite has mysteriously disintegrated in space
The strange disintegration of the Japanese "Hitomi" satellite that we want to understand today is largely related to this space Bermuda.
Japanese Hitomi satellite
- Japanese Hitomi satellite
The satellite is an X-ray astronomy satellite jointly developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and NASA.
The main purpose of the satellite is to study the properties of plasma emitting X-ray radiation in the universe, the evolution of galaxy clusters, and physical processes around active galactic nuclei.
On February 17, 2016, the Hitomi satellite was successfully launched from the Tanegashima Space Center in Japan. But the satellite flew in space for just over a month before the problem arose.
Tanegashima Cosmic Center
- The "Hitomi" satellite disintegrated
If the Hitomi satellite is seen as the future of X-ray astronomy, costing more than 31 billion yen (equivalent to 1.888 billion yuan), what has it experienced in space?
In the early morning of March 26, the Hitomi satellite was receiving instructions to move from the Crab Taurus Nebula to the Makalian 205 galaxy, but in the process, the sensitive period of the satellite suddenly went wrong.
Schematic diagram of "Hitomi"
Therefore, it is only possible to choose to use the gyroscope on board to judge its own spatial attitude, but because the gyroscope system sends the wrong command that "the star rotates at a speed of about 20 degrees per hour", this causes the star computer to also make a wrong response, trying to prevent the satellite from tumbling.
As a result, the more helpful it became, the more the satellite tumbled directly to the point of being uncontrollable. At this time, the "Hitomi" satellite ushered in the most dangerous moment, because its position at this time is very far away from Japan, resulting in Japanese scientists have no way to respond in real time.
The "Hitomi" satellite, the shape configuration from launch to the unfolding of the extended optical platform
The United States was also on Friday night, and it wasn't until Saturday morning that scientists saw the hitomi satellite in crisis. Through the observation of ground-based telescopes, the "Hitomi" satellite is already rolling at a high speed at a speed of one rotation every 5.2 seconds.
"Hitomi" satellite
Subsequently, the communication between the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and the Hitomi satellite was interrupted at 07:40 UTC on March 26, 2016, and the United Space Operations Center (JSPOC) observed that the satellite split into 5 pieces at 08:20 UTC on March 26.
Scientists have studied the causes of the disintegration event, and found that the wrong instructions caused by the event were actually uploaded a few weeks ago, resulting in the satellite's control system taking the wrong adjustment when the flight attitude was out of control, so that the thruster ignited in the wrong direction, and finally led to serious spin and loss of control.
The specific position of various observation instruments on the Hitomi satellite
- The relationship between the disintegration event and Space Bermuda
So what does this disintegration have to do with space Bermuda? In fact, the "Hitomi" satellite, like the Hubble telescope, will pass through the Bermuda region of space every once in a while, but it will pass over it.
Under the advancement of technology, many satellites will not choose to turn off the equipment when facing space Bermuda, but continue to operate, which is the case with the "Hitomi" satellite. Every time the Hitomi satellite passes through this place, there will be a problem of system failure, but the impact caused by each time is actually not large.
The Japan Aerospace Development Agency (JAXA) decided to deactivate the Hitomi satellite
But the high-energy protons here continue to cause anomalies in the satellite's "star positioning tracker," one of the basic devices used to maintain its correct attitude in space. It is true that the failure list that appeared was not a big problem, but it gradually accumulated and caused this catastrophe.
So even if scientists already have the information about space Bermuda and can debug the satellite accordingly, when the satellite is really running here, the impact of space Bermuda cannot be underestimated.
- The meaning of the "Hitomi" satellite
The reason why the astronomical community has high hopes for the "Hitomi" satellite is because it has indeed made a great contribution to science. About 8 days after the launch of the Hitomi satellite, the Eye of X-ray Observation was used to point to the Perseid Cluster, which is about 250 million light-years away from Earth.
The Hitomi satellite measures the rate at which gas flows out of the cluster and provides data to help scientists estimate how the mass of the cluster changes as stars are born and die within galaxies.
Perseus Galaxy Cluster
The eye of X-ray observation for observation, which used a high-resolution spectrometer that took 30 years to develop, is an X-ray calorimeter that can determine the level of X-ray photons with extremely high precision. The device has also been used in two previous satellite launches, but neither has been successful.
In 2000, the ASTRO-E satellite with this equipment crashed during launch, and by 2005, it was installed on the Japanese "Suzaku" satellite, but due to helium leakage, the satellite failed, and the equipment never performed its function.
Suzaku satellite
Therefore, the data detected by the "Hitomi" satellite using this device is still a huge contribution to the astronomical community. But scientists are still very sorry, because it takes 3-5 years to build such a calorimeter device, that is, this accident has made us miss a good opportunity to study the universe.
The vastness of the universe
Therefore, when scientists in various countries feel sorry for the "Hitomi" satellite, the trust in Japan's JAXA in satellite development has declined.