The MANTIS CubeSat is expected to measure UV and EUV light emitting from stars. (Image Credit: Dana Chafetz)
The James Webb telescope's lonely time in space is finally coming to an end. And don't worry. This doesn't mean NASA will stop the spacecraft's operations. Instead, it's planning to launch a tiny CubeSat in 2026 to work alongside the JWST. Researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder will design and develop the $8.5 million mission called the Monitoring Activity from Nearby sTars with uv Imaging and Spectroscopy (MANTIS).
The MANTIS spacecraft will observe the sky in the full range of ultraviolet light and extreme UV (EUV) light by using two high-tech telescopes packed into its tiny structure. This helps to study stars located dozens of light years away.
"We proposed MANTIS as a kind of ultraviolet sidekick that will follow JWST and look wherever it's looking, filling in this important piece of context on the stellar environments in which these planets live," said Kevin France, an associate professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and scientist on the MANTIS team.
It's not unusual for planets to emit large amounts of EUV while getting soaked in the host star's radiation, which could lead to atmosphere loss. However, measuring this radiation isn't very easy, and MANTIS can help with that. The spacecraft builds on tech from two CubeSats designed by the same team, the Colorado Ultraviolet Transit Experiment (CUTE) and the Supernova Remnants and Proxies for ReIonization Testbed Experiment (SPRITE), which launches next year.
"For a lot of stars, this is going to be the first time we've seen what they look like in extreme ultraviolet," said David Wilson, who leads the mission's science team at the University of Colorado.
This also suggests humanity could look at potential life-hosting planets.
"We want to understand how this flux of UV light coming from stars affects the atmospheres of planets and even their habitability," said principal investigator Briana Indahl, also at the University of Colorado.
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