Saint Mary’s University students take part in international space project

Saint Mary’s University professor Luigi Gallo talks about new funding for the study of black holes.

Some students in the Atlantic region are getting a boost from the Canadian Space Agency to study black holes.

Students at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax are taking part in the international X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM), which is led by Japan.

“The project has a long history in Canada, we’ve been involved in projects leading up to this since about 2010, but XRISM itself was launched in 2023, and we’ve been working on it a couple of years now,” said astronomy and physics professor Luigi Gallo in an interview with CTV Atlantic’s Stephanie Tsicos on Friday.

“I’m part of a team that includes a couple Canadians and an international team from all over the world that’s working on the science from these telescopes.”

Students are now getting in on the research as well, as some recent funding from the Canadian Space Agency looks to let students become a part of the mission.

“They’re involved in all aspects of the research, so we’re starting right at the very beginning where you’re writing proposals trying to use the telescope to carry out your projects and things like that, so students are involved in that kind of work,” said Gallo.

“Once we actually get the data, and we have a lot of data that we’re working on, students are right from the very beginning processing the data, analyzing the data.”

Gallo says the funding will help students have the resources they need to carry out the research.

“The funding that came out today from the Canadian Space Agency is dedicated to actually doing science research with these instruments, so we go through a lot of decades in order to build these telescopes and put them in space and these are billion-dollar projects,” he said.

“Then, afterwards, we still want to support our students to actually do the work and to actually carry out the science, and that’s what some of this funding that came out is specifically for, is to actually support the students so they can actually carry out this work.”

Gallo says students are getting the chance to use state-of-the-art technology like telescopes, and some are even helping lead some of the research.

“These are the major instruments of today, everyone’s heard of Hubble, but JWST, XRISM, Euclid, things like that, are part of the main missions of today and students of Atlantic Canada are at the forefront of this new discovery space and leading efforts, them themselves are actually leading efforts, carrying the professors along with them as they take charge of these projects.”