The skies of America seem really crowded lately. Another mysterious attack on United States airspace just days after the Chinese spy balloon exploded, allegedly flying over the Hawaiian archipelago over nuclear launch sites in Montana, more than five thousand kilometers away. A string of powerful green laser beams from outer space In fact, they tore the night sky last January 28.leaves the baffled operators of the Japanese Subaru telescope docked at the summit of Manua Loa Mountain (the highest point of the islands) wondering what it’s all about. aliens? Innovative intelligence technologies? Proof that we all live in the Matrix after all? Not really: The answer, while harder to verify than you might think, is actually much less exaggerated.
The initial hypothesis of researchers at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (in charge of the operations of the Subaru telescope) was that they were actually laser beams from a NASA satellite orbiting just above the region. The satellite in question is called ICESat-2 and was launched in 2018 to monitor the thickness of our planet’s glaciers and forests. To do this, it uses a Lidar system, a radar-like sensing device that uses light instead of sound to map objects present in its observation area. By interfering with fog or clouds, the often invisible laser beams fired by the satellite could theoretically also be identified from the ground, producing effects captured by Japanese cameras.
But the credible explanation that turned out to be wrong: calculations made by NASA researchers themselves after learning of the news did indeed rule out that ICESat-2 might have been responsible for the strange nighttime phenomenon. Simulating the orbit of other satellites equipped with similar instruments, they pointed the finger at another satellite: Daqi-1/AEMS, launched last year by the Chinese space agency to monitor the quality of Earth’s atmosphere.
It’s actually one of the new satellites that China has put into orbit as part of its air pollution program. It is equipped with five scientific instruments with which it can monitor the concentration of CO2, particulate matter and other types of pollutants in the atmosphere. One is the Aerosol and Carbon Dioxide Detection Lidar (Acdl), a lidar that emits laser beams of various wavelengths to identify different particles present in the atmosphere, including a corresponding 532 nanometer frequency beam, where different particles present in the atmosphere appear in the Hawaiian sky. .
Mystery revealed. And if similar observations are still rare for now, they may instead become more and more common in the future. The Daq-1 is actually only the first of a network of Chinese satellites that will be launched in the coming years to assist the country in the ambitious green transition that should result in zero emissions by 2060. We may have to get used to the Chinese lidars shining in the skies of half the world.
Source: Today IT
Karen Clayton is a seasoned journalist and author at The Nation Update, with a focus on world news and current events. She has a background in international relations, which gives her a deep understanding of the political, economic and social factors that shape the global landscape. She writes about a wide range of topics, including conflicts, political upheavals, and economic trends, as well as humanitarian crisis and human rights issues.
