Why Local Scientists Are Building a Fake Star

George Mason University’s Landolt Space Mission is a collaboration with NASA on a scientific initiative that will eventually send an artificial star into orbit around the Earth. Why do we need a fake star when so many real ones are already out there? The impostor will allow scientists to better calibrate their tools here on Earth and to gather more precise measurements of star brightness.

As NASA scientist Eliad Peretz explains, measurements of light are needed in order to learn things about stars’ temperature, distance, radius, age, and other significant information. That kind of increased accuracy has the potential to “change our understanding of the universe in a fundamental way,” Peretz says. “I’ve never observed an accurately calibrated star in the sky. This will be the first time.”

So how do you make a fake star? George Mason professor Peter Plavchan, who’s leading the mission, says it will likely take five years of design, production, and testing before it can be launched. Right now, the team is still at the project’s beginning phase, fine-tuning their proposal so NASA can approve it by next year. But the spacecraft will essentially be a satellite outfitted with lasers that communicate with instruments on Earth.

In addition to NASA, George Mason will be partnering with the National Institute of Standards and Technology and other organizations on the venture. The university will also employ the talents of a bunch of students: 11 undergraduates, five graduate students, and two high-schoolers.

The $19.5 million project will be the first mission run from the university’s interdisciplinary Mason Space Center, which the university is currently building. New facilities will include an operations center, mission control, and uncontaminated “clean rooms” in which the spacecraft will be constructed.

For Plavchan, one of the most intriguing possibilities is that this artificial star could help bring about discoveries of star properties “that we haven’t even thought of yet,” he says. “The ones we already know of are exciting. What else are we going to learn?”

This article appears in the December 2024 issue of Washingtonian.

Daniella Ignacio

Editorial Fellow