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NASA To Launch 3D Mission To Study Sun
Washington (AFP) Oct 24, 2006 NASA plans to launch Wednesday a 3-D mission to study the sun, using twin satellites in mirror orbits to trace the fiery star's streams of energy and matter to Earth. "We are at the dawning of a new age of solar observations," Russ Howard of the Naval Research Laboratory said at a NASA news conference. The two-year Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) mission will be the first to view the sun from two separate vantage points outside Earth's orbit. The nearly identical twin spacecraft will act like a pair of human eyes, each picking up data that is correlated, with data from observatories on the ground and in low-Earth orbit, into a third-dimension vision of the Sun and its influences. "We're going to be viewing things in a new dimension for us," Howard said. The STEREO solar observatories are scheduled to launch Wednesday aboard a Boeing rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Weather forecasters predicted good conditions for the 15-minute launch window which opens at 8:38 pm (0038 GMT Thursday). Howard said STEREO also was unique because it will see "broadside" the entire relationship between the sun and Earth, some 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) apart. And, he said, "for the first time we will be able to measure optically what the other instruments on STEREO ... are seeing in their instruments." The international mission has immediate relevance for the technologically advanced lives of the 21st century, he said. Scientists hope the mission will glean insight into solar activities such as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), the most violent explosions in our solar system. When aimed at Earth, these billion-tonne eruptions of the sun's corona spew intense radiation, severely disrupting the Earth's environment and endangering astronauts and scientific spacecraft. Information gleaned on the origins and behaviors of CMEs would allow more accurate forecasting, which would improve planning for space missions as well as over-the-pole flights, satellite communications and video transmissions. NASA has devised a unique launch of the two solar-powered observatories, using the moon's gravity like a pinball flipper to send them into opposite and slightly distinct orbits around the sun. At first they will be placed in a highly eccentric Earth orbit, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration explained. After a few weeks, the two spacecraft -- named "A", for "Advance", and "B", for "Behind" -- are expected to drift slowly apart but stay relatively close to each other as they line up for their close encounter with the moon about one month into the mission. "This is when the relatively small distance between the two spacecraft makes all the difference," the space agency said on its website. The "Behind" spacecraft will be flung completely away from Earth, and will become a satellite of the sun, while the "Ahead" spacecraft will curve back to fly past the moon a second time six weeks later, and be flung out in the opposite direction. The total cost of the international mission is 550 million dollars, the STEREO project manager, Ed Reynolds, of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, said at the news conference. Scientists of four European countries are participating in the mission: Belgium, Britain, France and Germany.
Source: Agence France-Presse Related Links Solar Science News at SpaceDaily
Lockheed Martin Instrument To Monitor Solar Eruptions On Latest NASA Sun Mission
Palo Alto CA (SPX) Oct 20, 2006The Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUVI) instrument - designed and built at the Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory of the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center (ATC) in Palo Alto - will soon begin returning stereo images of the Sun's corona as part of NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO). STEREO will utilize two nearly identical spacecraft on different trajectories to study the most energetic events on the surface and in the lower atmosphere of the Sun, and their travel through interplanetary space. |
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