NASA Successfully Launches a New Eye on the Sun

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NASA Successfully Launches a New Eye on the Sun

Post by bystander » Thu Feb 11, 2010 4:14 pm

NASA Successfully Launches a New Eye on the Sun
NASA PR 10-040 - 2010 Feb 11
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, lifted off Thursday from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 41 on a first-of-a-kind mission to reveal the sun's inner workings in unprecedented detail. The launch aboard an Atlas V rocket occurred at 10:23 a.m. EST.

The most technologically advanced of NASA's heliophysics spacecraft, SDO will take images of the sun every 0.75 seconds and daily send back about 1.5 terabytes of data to Earth -- the equivalent of streaming 380 full-length movies.

"This is going to be sensational," said Richard R. Fisher, director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "SDO is going to make a huge step forward in our understanding of the sun and its effects on life and society."

The sun's dynamic processes affect everyone and everything on Earth. SDO will explore activity on the sun that can disable satellites, cause power grid failures, and disrupt GPS communications. SDO also will provide a better understanding of the role the sun plays in Earth's atmospheric chemistry and climate.

SDO is the crown jewel in a fleet of NASA missions to study our sun. The mission is the cornerstone of a NASA science program called Living With A Star. This program will provide new understanding and information concerning the sun and solar system that directly affect Earth, its inhabitants and technology.

The SDO project is managed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. NASA's Launch Services Program at Kennedy Space Center managed the payload integration and launch.
Image
The Atlas V rocket carrying the Solar Dynamics Observatory speeds into space shortly
after launch Thursday morning from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
(NASA TV)

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SciAm: NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory Launch Successful

Post by bystander » Thu Feb 11, 2010 6:54 pm

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory launches successfully
Scientific American: Observations - 2010 Feb 11
A NASA satellite that promises to deliver an unprecedented volume of data about the workings of the sun launched successfully atop an Atlas 5 rocket Thursday. The Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 10:23 A.M. (Eastern Standard Time) after a one-day delay due to high winds at the launch site. The satellite separated from the upper rocket stage and deployed its solar arrays about two hours later.
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The satellite will circle Earth in a geosynchronous orbit that allows for constant contact with a pair of dedicated radio dishes in New Mexico. That way, SDO can continually offload its data stream without having to store or heavily process information on-board. The downside of a geosynchronous orbit is that twice a year, near equinox, Earth will block SDO's view of the sun. But SDO project scientist Dean Pesnell of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., says that the spacecraft's minders will use those periods for calibration and tune-up of the satellite.

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