Mark Pearce, professor i astropartikelfysik vid KTH i Stockholm, är projektledare för PoGOLite - The Polarised Gamma-ray Obeserver. Mark bloggar här på Rymdkanalen inför uppsändningen av PoGOLite och vi kommer på olika sätt intensifiera bevakningen av detta mycket spännande svenskledda projekt.
Almost exactly one year ago I posted my first blog entry to Rymdkanalen about the PoGOLite mission. PoGOLite is an X-ray telescope which can measure the polarisation of X-rays emitted by astrophysical objects. Although X-ray astronomy is a well established field, polarisation measurements are in their infancy and we were looking forward to helping to open a new observational window on the high energy Universe.
At the time of my posting, we were a couple of weeks away from launch and if you had asked me what I would be doing one year later, I would have said that we’d most likely know something new about the Crab nebula - our main scientific target. Readers of this blog already know that things did not go as planned. The maiden flight of PoGOLite was over after just a few hours due to a leaking balloon. An unfortunate sudden change in wind direction just after launch damaged the balloon and helium started to leak out. Rather than landing after 5 or so days in Canada, we landed after 5 or so hours just down the road from Esrange, near to Nikkaluokta. The year since then has been spent repairing damage to the telescope and preparing for a new attempt.
And now, the time has come. The launch window for PoGOLite in 2012 will open on July 1st. At this time, the Crab (in the constellation of Taurus) moves out from behind the Sun and becomes visible to our telescope.
We’ll looking forward to trying again - follow our progress on this Blog!
/Mark
