Upcoming Launch to Boost NASA’s Study of Sun’s Influence Across Space

Soon there will be three new ways to study the influence of the sun through the solar system with the launch of a trio of spacecrafts from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Should be launched at the earliest on Tuesday, September 23, the missions include the NASA IMAP (Cartography and interstellar acceleration probe), the NASA Carruthers Observatory of NASA and the Noaa SWFO-L1 space (Space Weather follow on Lagrange 1).

The three missions will be launched together aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center in NASA in Florida. From there, the spaceship will go together to their destination at the first point in Lagrange (L1), about a million kilometers from the earth towards the sun.

The missions will each focus on different effects of the solar wind – the continuous flow of particles emitted by the sun – and spatial time – the changing conditions in the space trained by the sun – from their origins to the sun to their most distant to billions of kilometers on the edge of our solar system. The research and observations of the missions will help us to better understand the influence of the sun on the habitability of the earth, map our house in space and protect satellites and travel astronauts and air teams against space weather impacts.

The IMAP and Carruthers missions are added to the NASA heliophysics fleet. Together, NASA’s heliophysical missions study a vast interconnected system from the sun to space surrounding the earth and other planets most distant from solar wind flows that constantly flow from the sun. The SWFO-L1 mission, funded and operated by the NOAA, will be the first satellite of the agency specifically designed and entirely dedicated to continuous and operational observations of the space.

As a modern celestial cartographer, IMAP will study two of the most important global problems of heliophysics: the interaction of the solar wind at its border with the interstellar space and the energy of the particles loaded with the sun.

The IMAP mission will mainly study the border of our heliosphere – a huge bubble created by the solar wind which summarizes our solar system – and studies how the heliosphere interacts with the local galactic district beyond. The heliosphere protects the solar system against high energy dangerous particles called galactic cosmic rays. The mapping of the borders of the heliosphere helps scientists understand our house in space and how it has become habitable.

“The IMAP will revolutionize our understanding of the external heliosphere,” said David McComas, director of the IMAP mission at Princeton University in New Jersey. “It will give us a very beautiful image of what is happening there by making measurements 30 times more sensitive and with a higher resolution than ever.”

The IMAP mission will also explore and trace the wide range of particles in interplanetary space. The spacecraft will provide real -time observations from solar wind and energetic particles, which can produce dangerous conditions not only in the space environment near the earth, but also on the ground. Mission data will help model and improve the prediction capacities for impacts in spatial weather conditions ranging from electric line disturbances to loss of satellites.

The Carruthers Geocorona observatory, a small satellite, will be launched with IMAP as a carpooling. The mission was appointed according to Dr. George Carruthers, creator of the moon -based telescope which captured the first images of the exosphere of the earth, the external layer of the atmosphere of our planet.

The Carruthers mission will be based on the heritage of Dr. Carruthers by translating changes in the exosphere of the earth. The point of view of the mission to L1 offers a complete view of the exosphere not visible to the relatively narrow distance from the moon to the earth. From there, he will address fundamental questions about the nature of the region, such as its shape, its size, its density and how it changes over time.

The exosphere plays an important role in the response of the earth to space time, which can have an impact on our technology, from satellites to orbit to communication signals in the upper atmosphere or electric lines on the ground. During the spatial meteorological storms, the exosphere intervenes in the absorption of energy and the release in the space environment near the earth, influencing the strength of spatial meteorological disturbances. Carruthers will help us to better understand the fundamental physics of our exosphere and improve our ability to predict the impacts of sun activity.

“We will be able to create films on how this atmospheric layer reacts when a solar storm strikes and watch it change with the seasons over time,” said Lara Waldrop, the main researcher of the Carruthers Observatory Geocorona at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.

Say separate from NASA research satellites, SWFO-L1 will be an operational satellite, designed to observe solar activity and solar wind in real time to provide critical data in the NOAA mission to protect the nation against environmental risks. SWFO-L1 will serve as a tag at the start of opening for potentially damaging spatial weather events that could have an impact on our technology on Earth. SWFO-L1 will observe the external atmosphere of the sun for large eruptions, called coronal mass ejections, and will measure the solar wind upstream of the earth with a series of instruments and a cutting-edge treatment system.

This mission is the first of a new generation of meteorological observatories of the Noaa space dedicated to 24/7 operations, working to avoid continuity gaps.

“SWFO-L1 will be an incredible mission in deep space for the NOAA,” said Dimitrios Vassiliadis, scientist of the SWFO program at the NOAA. “Thanks to its advantageous location in L1, it will permanently monitor the solar atmosphere while measuring the solar wind and its interplanetary magnetic fields long before its impact on earth – and transmit this data in record time.”

With the improved SWFO-L1 performance, the views released and the minimum delay between observations and data performance, forecastists of the NOAA space prediction center will give operators an improved delivery time to take precautionary measures that protect vital infrastructure, economic interests and national security on earth and space.

By Mara Johnson-Groh
Goddard Space Flight Center of NASA, Greenbelt, MD.