NASA Observatory Sun Satellite Studies Solar Rays

By: Tina Hodges
Staff Writer
Published: Feb 14, 2010

WISE comet spotted from survey explorer and NASA Observatory Sun satellite gets ready to retrieve data on solar rays for research.

NASA has successfully launched a new satellite that promises to deliver data about the sun. It was launched from an Atlas 5 rocket last Thursday. It is called the Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, and its mission will last five years.

The sun observatory carries three instruments that will deliver 1.5 terabytes of data. It will include dozens of ultrahigh-resolution images each minute. The satellite will also measure acoustic waves across the sun's surface.

Those waves allow heliophysicists to make inferences about the inner workings of the sun. It also allows for more reliable forecasts of solar activity and the weather it creates in space. Sun waves can potentially damage satellites, power grids and astronauts in orbit.

The satellite will circle the Earth in a geosynchronous orbit so that it can communicate directly with several radio dishes in New Mexico. The SDO can continually offload its data stream without having to store or heavily process information on-board. It is the latest NASA research program that one day could predict long solar rays from the sun.

Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer Discovers New Comet

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, has discovered its first comet. It is one of many it expects to find during its mission. It has infrared light capabilities to detect moving objects in space.

The comet, named P/2010 B2 (WISE), itself a dusty mass of ice more than 1.2 miles wide. Scientists believe it formed about 4.5 billions years ago at the same time as our solar system. Comet WISE started out in the cold, dark reaches of our solar system.

However, after getting knocked around by the gravitational forces of Jupiter, it settled into an orbit much closer to the sun. Comet WISE is now heading away from the sun and is about 109 million miles from Earth. The space telescope spotted the comet during its routine scan of the sky on January 22.