NASA’s Lunar Adventure: Harnessing BU’s X-Ray Telescope to Unlock Earth’s Magnetic Secrets!

After 40 days traversing through space, a gleaming, golden spacecraft delicately touches down on the moon’s surface. The autonomous lunar lander, equipped with 10 aerospace instruments, gazes toward Earth—238,855 miles away. As the dust underneath settles, a vivid image of our planet becomes visible. The scientists who have devoted years to preparing for this moment can finally exhale, eagerly anticipating its arrival to view Earth from a fresh perspective.

At least, that is the vision Boston University engineer Brian Walsh has for the landing of NASA’s Blue Ghost Mission 1.

This is because one of the instruments accompanying the Blue Ghost lander is a telescope developed by Walsh and his team at Boston University’s College of Engineering. The Lunar Environment Heliospheric X-ray Imager (LEXI) is set to be the first device created by BU to ever land on another celestial body. While LEXI has yet to depart the atmosphere, the lander is planned to launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida between January 15 and 17. For the moment, Walsh and his associates are preparing for Blue Ghost—engineered by Firefly Aerospace and commissioned by NASA—to take off.

Blue Ghost is one of eight US landers expected to launch within the next two years and will land on the near side of the moon, specifically in a flat area named Mare Crisium. Once LEXI unveils its protective dust cover mounted atop the lander, it will gain an unparalleled perspective of Earth’s magnetosphere, the magnetic shield that protects us from harmful charged particle radiation.

“LEXI will capture images, for the first time, of the edge of Earth’s magnetic field,” Walsh states, and how it redirects the continuous stream of solar wind and fast-moving charged particles that originate from the sun. If you have ever witnessed the vibrant hues of the aurora borealis, you have observed the effect of Earth’s magnetosphere interacting with solar wind, resulting in a geomagnetic storm. LEXI aims to observe that phenomenon from the reverse angle—instead of looking up from Earth’s surface, it will survey Earth from the moon’s vantage point.

However, for this to occur, everything must proceed as planned. Unfortunately, this is never a certainty in space exploration.

Last January, the inaugural NASA-commissioned lander mission encountered a malfunction, failing to reach beyond the atmosphere. The subsequent mission launched and successfully landed in February 2024. Blue Ghost will mark the agency’s third attempt to deliver payloads to the moon using a vehicle from a private firm, with its mission driven by NASA’s efforts to conduct research across various lunar regions. The agency’s ultimate objective is to establish the first moon-based space station as a launch point for missions to Mars.

The preparation for a moon mission is both exhilarating and anxiety-inducing, according to Walsh, but the inherent uncertainty is alleviated by thorough preparation and rigorous testing of the technology. His team at BU secured funding from NASA in 2019 to design and construct the telescope. For Walsh, however, LEXI represents a culmination of 15 years of work that began during his postdoctoral appointment at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, where he began detecting X-ray signals in the atmosphere.

“Centuries ago, individuals possessed vast knowledge of Earth’s magnetic field for navigation on its surface, and now we understand that this same field extends into space, offering protection from solar wind,” Walsh remarks. “We still lack information about what the outer boundary of that field resembles, its shape, or how it compresses. Thus, capturing this comprehensive picture is crucial for understanding the space environment surrounding Earth.”

In the months and years since the inception of the LEXI project, the team has been tirelessly working: selecting materials (an early prototype crafted from plastic was humorously dubbed “Plexi”), calculating to ascertain the ideal proportions, integrating electronic systems, creating custom-engineered glass lenses, and assessing its resilience. The 24-pound telescope must endure intense vibrations, significant temperature fluctuations, and achieve seamless communication with the control room of the lab.

device’s cutting-edge optical lenses resemble lobster eyes—a technology developed in the 1990s inspired by the exceptional vision lobsters possess in dark, murky surroundings—that can detect even the slightest glimmering X-ray emissions, known as soft X-rays. The crustacean-inspired optics in LEXI were meticulously designed to endure space travel. Walsh and his team, in partnership with scientists from NASA Goddard, Johns Hopkins University, University of Miami, and the University of Leicester, released a technical summary of the telescope in Space Science Reviews.

When it wasn’t being inspected, LEXI was kept in a hermetically sealed vacuum chamber at BU’s Charles River Campus, ensuring that not even a speck of dust could disrupt its functionality. In March 2024, the apparatus made its final showcase in a clean room at the College of Engineering, allowing community members a brief look at it before its departure. The following day, Walsh and the crew cautiously—extraordinarily cautiously—began transporting the apparatus via truck to Firefly Aerospace’s headquarters in Austin, Texas, where it was assembled and integrated into the Blue Ghost lander. That marked the last occasion Walsh saw the telescope up close.

“I feel the sentiment is akin to sending a child off to university. You invest so much effort nurturing them, watching over them, and overseeing all their actions, and then you relinquish them, having to say alright, let’s proceed,” says Walsh.

Currently, he communicates with the telescope through the computer systems of the lander. And their efforts remain relentless. The team has maintained steady communication with Firefly to persist in testing LEXI and performing mission simulations prior to launch.

“The simulations have been extensive and rigorous,” says Walsh. Some have continued for 24 hours a day over an entire week—precisely how it will be when the lander arrives on the moon, enabling the team to practice taking turns monitoring the incoming data in real time. Walsh mentions that everything has gone smoothly. They expect that within minutes of LEXI powering on and commencing data collection, they will start receiving X-ray signals that will elucidate the boundary of Earth’s magnetic field.

These X-rays are emitted when a charged atom expelled from the sun, such as an oxygen ion, collides with a neutral particle, like hydrogen, which exists in plentiful amounts in Earth’s outer atmosphere. When the atoms collide, the oxygen ion captures an electron from the hydrogen, resulting in the emission of an X-ray. LEXI will document those unseen wavelengths of light, perpetually surrounding our planet, for a duration of seven days. Following this, the sun will set on the moon, and it is anticipated that frigid temperatures—plummeting as low as -208 degrees Fahrenheit—will incapacitate the lander and all its instruments permanently.

It’s a narrow time frame, but “there are significant unresolved questions that this data will assist in answering,” states Walsh, such as predicting when and how Earth gains more energy from the sun that leads to geomagnetic storms. “We exist within this bubble, this magnetosphere. Some days, a considerable amount of energy penetrates that magnetic bubble. Our objective is to comprehend how that process functions.”

It remains uncertain whether those high-energy days stem from fluctuations in the solar wind, whether energy accumulates and then breaches the magnetosphere in a substantial surge, or if it gradually seeps into the magnetosphere like a continuous stream of wind. This knowledge is critical. During significant geomagnetic storms—similar to when the aurora borealis was visible in Massachusetts in October 2024—thousands of satellites must be elevated in their orbits, as the lower atmosphere becomes significantly denser, pulling them downward. Storms can also disrupt radio communications, navigational technologies, and aerospace systems. Data from LEXI will help enhance models that predict those extreme space weather days and assist authorities in preparing for them.

With much to uncover, the launch of Blue Ghost will herald the commencement of the scientific journey Walsh and his team have diligently prepared for. The mission is set to orbit Earth for the initial 25 days, then spend 4 days in transit, before orbiting the moon for 16 days prior to landing. From their control room at BU, they will activate a latch on the front of the telescope that will unveil a small aperture, exposing LEXI’s lenses to the vastness of space. All the hours and years of effort will culminate when they receive data illuminating the magnetosphere boundary, offering insights into the electromagnetic connection between Earth and the sun that has permitted the existence of life on Earth.

“Capturing the very first image of Earth’s magnetic field will be exceedingly thrilling,” asserts Walsh.

In the forthcoming weeks, The Brink will track LEXI’s advancements, from the imminent launch to the landing of the Blue Ghost to Walsh’s evaluation of the data. Follow BU on social media and return to The Brink for more breathtaking updates.

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