NASA’s StarBurst mission passes critical tests

StarBurst is a NASA-led mission that is designed to detect the initial emission of short gamma-ray bursts produced from neutron star mergers. These gamma-ray bursts are among the most powerful explosions in the universe. Most of the heavy metals in the universe are formed from neutron star mergers. Gold and platinum are two of such metals that these powerful events give birth to.

Observatories on Earth already detect the gravitational waves from neutron star mergers. StarBurst is set to detect the gamma-rays simultaneously with the gravitational waves.

StarBurst passed its thermal and vibration testing at NASA Marshall. The thermal testing occurred in a vacuum chamber. This test simulated the hottest and coldest conditions the instrument will encounter during operations in space. The vibration testing simulated the vibration and turbulence that StarBurst will face during launch.

StarBurst is now awaiting instrument calibration as the next step towards launch readiness. NASA aims to launch StarBurst as early as 2027 during the next run of the Laser-Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory. This will maximize the chances of detecting gamma-ray bursts simultaneously with gravitational waves.

Astronomers have only observed one neutron star merger where a gamma-ray burst and gravitational waves were detected at the same time. With StarBurst, they expect to find up to 10 per year.