High Energy Light Isotope eXperiment (HELIX) is a balloon-borne experiment desgiend to measure the isotope composition of cosmic rays at an altitude of ~40 km. The construction and tests of the payload has been delayed due to global pandemic. This year, 2014, HELIX is successfully launched from the Esrange Space Center located at kiruna, Sweden. HELIX followed the Polar Vortex and successfully landed on Ellesmere Island (Umingmak Nuna), Nunavut in Canada after 6 days of flight.
While we learn a lot about the Universe by observing photons (like radio and visible light), other particles known as “cosmic rays” also bring us information about the Universe. The HELIX experiment is designed to search for elemental isotopes, especially beryllium, among these cosmic rays. The majority of cosmic-ray beryllium isotopes are created by particle interactions as cosmic rays travel throughout our Galaxy. Similar to carbon dating, we can use the measured isotope ratios of beryllium to study how long the cosmic rays travel inside of our Galaxy. These measurements will provide important clues to explain the recent discovery of excess antimatter particles in the cosmic rays.
As cosmic rays interact with the atmosphere of the Earth and are destroyed to become other subatomic particles, HELIX is designed to take measurements at high altitude using a long duration balloon provided by NASA. Separating isotopes is a challenging task especially because cosmic rays are very energetic. For precision measurements, HELIX has 13,000 separate channels of particle detector components and a 1 Tesla superconducting magnet on board.
The HELIX team at Queen’s University includes Conor McGrath (postdoc) and two Master's students (Melissa Baiocchi and Avani Bhardwaj). Five undergraduate students also contributed either as summer research scholars or by pursuing HELIX-related subjects as their thesis topic.
HELIX is funded by NASA, NSERC,and CSA.
Useful links
Scientific American article on HELIX (including comments from Prof. Park) Department new page