Mission Is Contingent On Budget Cuts At Both Agencies
NASA and the European Space Agency have selected 10 proposals
for science instruments to fly aboard a spacecraft that will study
the sun from a unique vantage point in space. The European-led
mission, called the Solar Orbiter, will be positioned about
one-fourth the distance Earth is from the sun. The location
ultimately will enhance the ability for scientists worldwide to
forecast space weather.
Space weather can produce electromagnetic fields on Earth that
induce extreme currents in wires, disrupting power lines, causing
wide-spread blackouts and affecting communication cables that
support the Internet. Severe space weather also produces energetic
solar particles and the dislocation of Earth's radiation belts,
which can damage satellites used for commercial communications,
global positioning and weather forecasting. Additionally, space
weather poses risks to astronauts.
"These selections provide the highest scientific value to help
answer questions about our life giving star, the sun," said Dick
Fisher, director for NASA's Heliophysics Division in Washington.
"This collaboration will create a new chapter in heliophysics
research and provide a strong partnership with the international
science community to complement future robotic and human
exploration activities."
The continued development of the selected investigations beyond
initial design of the instruments, known as Phase A, will depend on
technical feasibility, cost and schedule commitments from the
principal investigators. Continuation also will depend on available
NASA program funds and ESA's Cosmic Vision mission down-selection
process to be completed in early 2010.
"The announcement of the preliminary payload selection for Solar
Orbiter is a positive step toward the realization of a joint
mission aimed at collecting unprecedented data about our star,"
said Marcello Coradini, ESA coordinator for solar system missions
in Paris. "We are delighted to continue our tradition of
partnership with NASA, which already has enabled us to carry out
extraordinary scientific missions."
Of the 10 selected instrument proposals, three will receive
NASA funding:
- Solar Orbiter Heliospheric Imager; Russell
Howard, principal investigator, Naval Research Laboratory in
Washington. This instrument will provide revolutionary measurements
to pinpoint coronal mass ejections or CMEs. CME's are violent
eruptions with masses greater than a few billion tons. They travel
from 60 to more than 2,000 miles per second. They have been
compared to hurricanes because of the widespread disruption of
communications and power systems they can cause when directed at
Earth.
- Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment;
Donald Hassler, principal investigator, Southwest Research
Institute in Boulder, CO. This instrument will provide an extreme
ultraviolet spectrometer or optical instrument that will measure
different wavelengths of light emitted from the sun. Data will
advance our knowledge of the sun's dynamics to better understand
the effects on Earth and the solar system.
- Suprathermal Ion Spectrograph; lead
co-investigator Glenn Mason, Applied Physics Laboratory in
Columbia, MD. This experiment will measure energetic particles
ejected from the sun. Data will be compared to other solar and
interplanetary processes to understand solar system space weather.
Understanding the connections between the sun and its planets will
allow better prediction of the impacts of solar activity on humans,
technological systems and even the presence of life itself in the
universe.
The investigations are part of NASA's Living with a Star
Program. The program is designed to understand how and why the sun
varies, how planetary systems respond and the effect on human space
and Earth activities. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in
Greenbelt, MD manages the program for the agency's Heliophysics
Division of the Science Mission Directorate.