NASA Solar Probe Blasts Toward Rendezvous With Sun

coondoggie writes "NASA this morning used a United Launch Alliance Atlas rocket to blast its 6,800lb Solar Dynamics Observatory into an orbit 22,300 miles above Earth. The $808 million spacecraft will ultimately study the Sun and send back what NASA called a prodigious rush of pictures about sunspots, solar flares and a variety of other never-before-seen solar events. The idea is to get a better idea of how the Sun works and let scientists better forecast the space weather to offer earlier warnings to protect astronauts and satellites, NASA said."

Comments

Re: Rendezvous ?

[zippthorne]

It will be equipped with its own artificial eclipse which will be precisely sized to look at various parts of the photosphere, corona, etc. There is not any real benefit of a lunar eclipse, since the unlit side of the moon would be.. unlit, thus making it equivalent to a small metal disk anyway. I suppose you could talk about lunar mountain ranges, but frankly, the point of an orbital sun-observing satellite is that there isn't any atmosphere to drown out your signal with diffuse light. That is particularly important *before* the occulting disk: the atmosphere can't scatter light that never reaches the atmosphere.

Good observations can be made if the occulting disk is *ahead* of the atmosphere, the problem being the moon is the only appropriately sized disk for an earthbound observatory to use, and it's on the moon's time. If the moon is what you want to observe, you should be able to get pictures of it from earth as well or better than pictures from an equally distant space-based station.

Re:GPS disuption warning- a good thing

[BubbaDave]

GPS interference is temporary, I worry more about the ejection products that can cause permanent damage.

Dave