While astronomers gaze at stars farther and farther out in the heavens, some scientists want to take a closer look at the star closest to us: the sun.
NASA plans to launch a new spacecraft, the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), to take the most detailed observations ever of the sun to understand its complex weather and storms.
"The sun changes every time we look at it, [it] is never the same," said Dean Pesnell, SDO project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., in a Thursday briefing.
Scientists hope data from the new probe will help them understand changes in the sun's magnetic field, which gets more and less active on an 11-year cycle, sending out periodic flares of charged particles that can disrupt technology on Earth.
The $808 million spacecraft is slated to launch Feb. 9 at 10:36 a.m. EST (1536 GMT) atop an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla.
read the rest of the article
Published By SPACE.com
Article By Clara Moskowitz
SPACE.com Staff Writer
posted: 21 January 2010
05:19 pm ET
Monday, January 25, 2010
Monday, January 4, 2010
Register for the NASA SDO Goddard Tweetup
SDO is GO for Launch! Come to Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., to watch the Solar Dynamics Observatory launch into space. Meet scientists and engineers, tour the cleanroom where SDO was built, and connect with common minds. Fifteen lucky Tweeps will be selected to join SDO scientists, engineers and invited guests at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to watch SDO ride a rocket into orbit and begin a new era in Heliophysics, the study of our sun and its effects on Earth and the solar system.Can't make it? Launch your own tweetup. Take over your classroom, local library or your neighbor's house to celebrate this event.
Click here to learn more.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)