Transcript of Interview with John Nousek,
Mission Operations Director, Swift Mission Operations Center

17 September 2004
The role of the Mission Operations Center in commanding Swift
We here at Swift’s Mission Operation Center at Penn State are responsible for giving the satellite its instructions on what it’s supposed to do. Now in order to do that, we have a ten minute opportunity every time the satellite goes over the Melindi ground station during the satellite’s 96-minute orbit around the earth. During that time, we have to upload or take the information from here at Penn state and get it up to the satellite where it will be then stored and used to operate for 5 days of operation. Instructions on when and where to look at old gamma-ray bursts (GRB’s) or possibly to conduct calibration observations.

The importance of speed and the challenges and opportunities that the demand for speed makes for the Mission Operations Center
Swift’s very name captures the idea behind it. Everything we do has to be done very quickly and very efficiently because these GRB’s are momentary, unpredictable events. Everything has to be directed at getting the fastest possible response, so the satellite responds automatically, but we here too at the Missions Operations Center have to respond quickly as well to plan for new operation schedules and new scientific exploitation of the bursts that Swift discovers. Of course, the ability of Swift to respond so quickly to GRB’s means that it can also open up a whole new window of scientific opportunities. Because we can upload from the ground opportunities for new discoveries, it means that Swift will be able to observe objects much more quickly than any other space-borne observatory.

Swift will be sending data to astronomers throughout the world, including both astronomers at other research centers and amateur astronomers.
Swift is a very powerful observatory, having three different instruments to cover the gamma-ray, x-ray, and optical range, but Swift alone is not sufficient to fully exploit the gamma-ray burst science, so our plan is to instantly transmit a new GRB and as much information as we have about it to astronomers all over the world so that they can use their telescopes or possibly command other satellites to observe the Swift discovered bursts. In addition, even amateur astronomers who want to support observations of GRB’s will be informed of the discoveries we’re making so that they can race to their telescopes and also share in these great discoveries.

Why scientists at other observatories and in other research teams are eagerly looking to the Swift Mission Operations Center to provide new information about the universe
Although we’ve started making important discoveries with previous missions, Swift is going to dramatically increase the number of GRB’s that have detailed optical and X-ray counterparts. The advantage of this is that we can now use a full suite of other satellites and other observatories with their capabilites in the infrared, in radio, and even in just larger light-gathering buckets to be able to make much more sensitive spectra than what we can do with the satellite alone.

The impact of the expected discovery of new gamma-ray bursts
There simply are not enough GRB’s that are known to properly study the phenomenon of GRB’s. We’re still in a data-starved environment, and that means that every new GRB that we discover will be a whole a new window on the phenomenon.

<cut from video for sake of brevity> A fellow satellite called HETI has been operational and although its only discovered perhaps 10 or 12 GRB’s over the course of the past year, each one of those has brought a great deal of scientific excitement. When Swift is working, and we expect to be discovering 10 times as many, we hope to dramatically increase the number of discoveries made in the field of gamma-ray science.</cut from video for sake of brevity>

Swift, we expect, will be discovering perhaps a 100 or so GRB’s per year. In this new data set, we expect to make certain discoveries in GRB science that we can almost predict. These are things like, there’s a sub-class of GRB’s that are very, very short. We’re very much hoping that we’ll be able to discover the first optical or X-ray counterpart to a short GRB. In addition, GRB’s have been found amongst the most distant objects in the universe but we would expect that when we discover so many more of them that we might well be discovering the most distant GRB ever seen. In addition, some rare group of GRB’s are actually very, very close, and some of those we hope to see. So, each one of these categories will provide an important new test on what the origin and evolution of GRB’s are.

How scientists can use the information from Swift to study the ancient and very distant universe
Swift will be discovering GRB’s at extremely large distances. We already know of one that was previously discovered that was more than 90% of the age of the universe, this was the time it took for that light to reach us. Swift hopefully seeing so many more GRB’s will find some that are even more distant. And rather than studying the GRB’s in this case, we can use the light from the GRB’s to examine the whole history of the universe since that light was emitted, because as that light has been traveling for 10 billion years and more to get to us, it’s also suffered absorption and other effects that will tell us about what has happened in the whole lifetime in that 10 billion years of the universe.

The connection between Swift and other space observatories and research programs, including the search for gravitational waves
Swift is also a sort of a finder-scope for some other exciting missions. In particular, there’s a new field of astronomy opening up which comes from the study not of light, but of the ripples in space and time which we call gravity waves. As Swift discovers GRB’s, which are the result of collapses of massive stars, there’s some hope that they might be accompanied by gravity waves, and gravity wave observatories, such as the currently operating LIGO experiment, and the future space-based version called LISA, will use the Swift-discovered GRB's as a trip-wire to see if these same GRB’s also produce these enigmatic gravity waves.

Surprises that might be discovered by Swift
When we put together the Swift mission, of course we were focusing on GRB’s, because that’s, in my opinion, one of the most exciting fields of astronomical research. But the capability of any new satellite, and especially one as unique as Swift, can be used in many other ways. Because we can respond almost instantly to an astrophysical phenomenon, I suspect that we’re going to be making many discoveries which are currently unpredicted--those things where some dramatic new event occurs in the sky and because Swift can look there within a matter of minutes, we’ll be able to see things that more slow-to-react, traditional satellites and observatories will not be able to observe at all. And so from these rapid new reactions, I expect that we’re going to make a number of discoveries that I can’t really predict even at this moment.

The involvement of Penn State students at the Swift Observatory, and how students are benefitting from this experience
Swift is a dramatic opportunity. It has the potential for making great discoveries in the field of astrophysics. Beyond those direct impacts, though, its also very important for giving us a wonderful opportunity of both training and exciting students and other researchers in the the technical requirements of building an observatory. So, from the excitement, and what they learn from working on this mission, we hope that our students and the young faculty and staff that do this will be much better trained and much more enthused to be able to make the great discoveries of space science of the future.

We’ve been very delighted to have student involvement in the Penn State program here on Swift, throughout the program. So we’ve had both graduate and undergraduate students assisting in the building of the instruments, in their calibration, and now we have them involved in the science analysis and in the Mission Operations Center. I’ve had several of the students tell me that they feel that this is an opportunity that really is available practically at no other institution, and it really gives them a feeling of knowing just how a space mission works from the ground up, and I’m very proud to be able to give them this opportunity.

The Swift Observatory consists of three instruments: the Burst Alert Telescope (BAT), the X-ray Telescope (XRT), and the Ultraviolet Optical Telescope (UVOT). Each instrument plays a distinct role in the detection of gamma ray bursts.
The Swift Observatory consists of three instruments. The gamma-ray detecting instrument is called the Burst Alert Telescope, and it was fabricated at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. The X-ray Telescope was provided by the Penn State consortium, both of us here at Penn State plus the Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera in Italy, and the University of Leicester in England. The third instrument, the UV Optical Telescope, or UVOT for short, was again built under the Penn State leadership with support from the Mullard Space Sciences Laboratory, once again in England.

One of Penn State’s important roles on the Swift Observatory was building the X-ray telescope, or XRT for short. This activity was led by Professor Dave Burrows of Penn State, and he was ably assisted by some international partners. The Osservatorio di Brera in Milan, Italy, supplied the X-ray telescope mirrors and the University of Leicester in England in the United Kingdom, supplied the CCD camera that detects the X-rays. In addition the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas, provided the computer which was used on the flight instrument.

The instrument which provides the most precise location of the GRB’s is called the UVOT, which is short for the Ultra Violet Optical Telescope. Built by the Penn State and the Mullard Space Sciences Laboratory in England, the UVOT is a sensitive optical and ultraviolet telescope which can actually see the fading optical counterpart to the GRB. Typically, it will not be so bright as to make it unambiguously identifiable just from the UVOT alone, but what we are expecting is that the combination of the BAT discovering the burst and the X-ray telescope giving us a precise position will allow us to pick out which of the many faint objects corresponds to the GRB after-glow.

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The following comments were not used on the video web site, but provide additional useful information about the Swift Observatory.

The role of the Mission Operations Center in commanding Swift
The normal operations at Swift is that for about 10 minutes every 96 minute orbit, the satellite is visible from a tracking station in Melindi, Kenya, and we are able to directly communicate with the satellite. That is where a high volume of data gets both received, all the data collected, and sent. But, in order to be able to respond instantaneously, we also use a tracking data relay satellite system that allows us to communicate instantly no matter when or where the burst or other important information happens. In order to instruct Swift, we send a command set which we call a command upload during a one 10-minute pass over the Melindi tracking station in Kenya. That will then load 5 days of instructions about where the satellite should be pointed.

The impact that the Swift Observatory has had on Penn State
We’re very proud to have played such an important role in the Swift Observatory here at Penn State. This has had an important effect on us at Penn State because it has demonstrated that we can be involved in a major space project and that we can be a useful partner to not just NASA but also to several international organizations. I think that this puts is in a better stance for a couple of reasons. First, students get an opportunity to work on NASA programs and get an opportunity to work with these foreign partners, and perhaps just as importantly, it means that in the future, missions that need, say, a mission operation center may well turn to Penn State as a place to be able to get that work done for them.

Penn State is very proud to have participated in such a major role in the Swift Observatory. It represents a part of our newly created Center for Space Research Programs which is trying to attract more opportunities in the area of space research to Penn State. Having had the experience of building and now operating a mission from here at Penn State, we feel that we’re much better positioned to be able to seek opportunities on other missions, to be able to do similar kinds of things.

Swift is truly an international collaboration.
We had major hardware contributions from England and from Italy, and in addition we had a calibration facility in Germany and we had important help from Japanese people on the Gamma-Ray instrument. The experience of my Penn State Students working with these international scientists and engineers is really an invaluable experience. In the world we live in, and even more so in the future, we have an international scale for our research. And from having experience in working in this way, we build the building blocks in creating the great new missions of the future, which I think are largely going to be more and more international in scope, and that we can learn from our foreign colleagues, approaches and scientific knowledge that will improve the education of our American students that will prepare them better to compete in the world of the future.