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Deep on the campus of Riga Technical University, a team of researchers is searching for technology that will one day help prevent asteroids from hitting Earth.
Very high precision chronoscopes built by hand in the laboratory of Latvian startup Eventech are used today to track the movements of satellites.
This year, the company won a contract with the European Space Agency (ESA) to develop instruments capable of evaluating the possibility of deviating the course of an asteroid before it gets too close to our planet.
The US NASA intends to launch next year the first stage of the AIDA mission to divert the trajectory of an asteroid and assess the impact of said operation, under the name of Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART).
In addition, as part of DART, on July 22, 2021, a Falcon 9 rocket from Elon Musk’s Space X will lift a 500 kilogram probe equipped with a camera, in the direction of the asteroid Didymos that is due to impact. to modify its current course that risks approaching Earth in 2123.
Eventech’s chronoscopes should be ready for HERA’s follow-up mission, which is expected five years later to determine if this impact has actually thrown the asteroid off course.
“Our new technology, which will equip ESA’s second spacecraft, called HERA, will measure whether the impact took Didymos away from its previous course, thus avoiding harming humanity,” Eventech engineer Pulkstenis told AFP Imants.
“It’s much more interesting to go where no man has been than to make worldly electronics for big profits,” he insisted, borrowing the famous formula from Star Trek, the 1960s science fiction television series.
The Eventech chronoscopes are part of the space technology tradition of this Baltic state, which dates back to Soviet times when Sputnik, the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth, was launched in 1957.
They measure the time it takes for a pulse of light to reach and return to an orbiting object.
Eventech devices can record time measurements down to a picosecond, or one thousandth of a billionth of a second, allowing them to convert them into distance measurements with an accuracy of no more than two millimeters.
Chronoscopes for deep space
The Latvian laboratory produces around ten chronoscopes each year to equip observatories around the world.
They allow us to observe the Earth’s atmosphere, increasingly congested by new waves of private satellites that are added to the traditional scientific and military devices.
“Following them all requires the right tools,” stresses Pavels Razmajevs, Eventech’s Chief Operating Officer.
Although Latvia did not become a full member of ESA until 2016, its engineers have been tracking satellites since the Soviet era.
The University of Latvia has its own laser telemetry station located in a forest south of Riga.
To make their devices, Eventech engineers use analog parts as much as possible because microchips take nanoseconds to evaluate the signal, too long for measurements calculated in picoseconds.
Even the physical length of the motherboard can affect the speed at which the signal travels from one circuit to another.
While chronoscopes are used to measure from Earth, a different device designed for distant missions in space is being developed in another corner of the lab, intended to track different interplanetary objects from a probe. moving space.
“There is no GPS coverage device on other planets, so you have to carry your own precision telemetry equipment,” Pulkstenis explained.
Developing devices for deep space is a very complex task, but that is what Eventech engineers appreciate the most.
“Our cutting-edge technology has to withstand extreme temperatures in space and cosmic radiation,” says Pulkstenis, but “it’s a nice challenge.”
