NASA will be launching a new satellite June 26, which aims to provide a more detailed look at the sun's lower atmosphere.
NASA released a press release announcing that the space agency is all set to launch its new satellite, The Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS), June 26 which aims to provide the most detailed look ever at the sun's lower atmosphere.
During the mission, the satellite will capture how the sun's material moves, gathers energy, and heats up as it travels through this largely unexplored region of the solar atmosphere. The lower atmosphere of the sun is where most of its ultraviolet emission is generated and which impacts the Earth's climate.
Jeffrey Newmark, an IRIS program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. said that this area has been largely unexplored and with this new satellite, the agency hopes to get a detailed look at it.
"IRIS data will fill a crucial gap in our understanding of the solar interface region upon joining our fleet of heliophysics spacecraft," said Newmark. "For the first time we will have the necessary observations for understanding how energy is delivered to the million-degree outer solar corona and how the base of the solar wind is driven."
The satellite reportedly carries an ultraviolet telescope that feeds a multi-channel imaging spectrograph and is the first of its kind to use an ultraviolet telescope to obtain high-resolution images.
"Previous observations suggest there are structures in this region of the solar atmosphere 100 to 150 miles wide, but 100,000 miles long," said Alan Title, IRIS principal investigator at Lockheed Martin. "Imagine giant jets like huge fountains that have a footprint the size of Los Angeles and are long enough and fast enough to circle Earth in 20 seconds. IRIS will provide our first high-resolution views of these structures along with information about their velocity, temperature and density."
The satellite has been designed by Lockheed Martin's Advanced Technology Center in Palo Alto, Calif. and will launch aboard an Orbital Sciences Corp. Pegasus XL rocket deployed by the company's L-1011 aircraft from Vandenberg Air Force Base on the central California coast.
