British schoolboy Miles Solomain helped NASA engineers to eliminate the error in the calculations. This is reported by GeekTimes.
The student studied the online data from the particle detectors installed at the International Space Station (ISS). These data are laid openly in the framework of the TmePix project, launched in December 2015 by NASA in conjunction with the British Institute for Research.
The uniqueness of the project is that schoolchildren can conduct their research on real data collected in real conditions. What did the 17-year-old Miles Solomon. The teenager processed the data in Excel tables. By sorting the list of energy values, the student found an error that was missed by NASA engineers, the schoolboy told BBC Radio 4.
The physics teacher James O'Neill says: "We discussed the data, but Miles unexpectedly brightened up during one of the lessons and asked:" Why is the -1 energy indicated here? " Miles drew attention to the fact that the sensors did not record the correct value of the radiation, but instead kept a negative value. The student did not hesitate to talk about the find to the teacher, and together they decided to write a letter to NASA.
The US National Aerospace Agency gratefully accepted the results of Miles's work. NASA engineers said that they were aware of sensor errors, but believed that such malfunctions occur once or twice a year. Sorting, conducted by a British schoolboy, clearly showed that such errors occur several times a day.