Holographic Calling Card Sent into Space

Holographic textiles are often used in fashion and design to add a futuristic and eye-catching element to clothing, but an article in The Cornell Chronicle (produced by Cornell University in Ithaca, New York) explains how holographic effects are being used to dress a satellite.

A project to launch Cornell-made satellite technology into a neighbouring solar system is being celebrated at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York City.

The new exhibit, ‘Postcards from Earth: Holograms on an Interstellar Journey’ ¹, showcases the project, in which a small, low-cost satellite (CubeSat) will be released into low Earth orbit and will deploy a ‘light sail’ that is only 0.18 mm thick. This prototype will demonstrate the potential of making the 40-trillion-mile trek to Earth’s closest star system – Alpha Centauri.

The CubeSat and the light sail will be adorned with holographic art. The holograms feature sculptures created by Ithaca-born artist C Bangs around the theme of earthling DNA – a fish, a man, a woman and a moth.

‘It’s representing our home, in a sense, these different forms of life that we’re sending out there, up into space,’ said Gillis Lowry, an astronomy major in the College of Arts and Sciences, who designed the exhibit in collaboration with museum staff and doctoral student Joshua Umansky-Castro, who heads up the Alpha CubeSat project for the Cornell Space Systems Design Studio. ‘The main message of the exhibit is ‘What sort of message would you want to send to aliens?’.

The holograms were created in partnership with holographer Martina Mrongovius and the specific designs were selected by the Alpha CubeSat team, members of the public. Museumgoers can vote to pick the final hologram.

A single hologram can potentially hold thousands of images, making the technology an incredibly efficient means of interstellar communication. Holograms could also serve a practical function, helping to stabilise a future light sail, which would be propelled by a laser beam shone from Earth, on its way to another star system.

The Alpha CubeSat project is part of NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative and is overseen by Mason Peck, Professor of Astronautical Engineering in Cornell Engineering, who directs the Space Systems Design Studio. The Alpha CubeSat team currently comprises about 35 students; more than 100 students have contributed since the project began in 2016.

‘I’ve been in this windowless basement lab for the past four years, tinkering away, trying to get this CubeSat to work,’ Umansky-Castro said. ‘So, it is pretty surreal that it’s in the public spotlight now and we get to share this story with so many people.’

The incorporation of holograms gives the project an interdisciplinary thrust by combining engineering and art, in a way that feels very true to late Cornell astronomer Carl Sagan’s Voyager Golden Record which sent thoughtfully curated artifacts of human culture into the cosmos, ‘Carl Sagan is kind of the whole reason that I’m at Cornell. He’s been my biggest inspiration,’ said Lowry, who shares a birthday with the astronomer. ‘I think Alpha CubeSat is another extension of how Cornell is continuing his legacy. And I really hope that a mission like this is something he would be proud of’.

1 - www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8-zzfKyGtg