Official News - page 9

REAL LIFE NEWS: MISSION TO STUDY THE SUN

by Hazed

NASA has launched two spacecraft which are heading for the sun, in order to take the first ever 3D movies of our closest star. The Stereo mission (short for Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatories) will study violent eruptions known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs) which create huge clouds of energetic particles. These particles can trigger magnetic storms which disrupt power grids and communications.

Magnetic storms are considered the worst aspects of "space weather" and the mission is expected to help researchers make accurate forecasts of when they are going to happen.

The two crafts, the size of golf-carts, are almost identical. They will orbit the sun, one slightly ahead of the other, providing stereo vision. At the moment, solar observatories look at the sun straight on and have a great deal of trouble determining the precise direction of a CME; having the two crafts look at the Sun-Earth system from their widely space locations, scientists will be able to look at the storms from the side and work out very rapidly if a cloud of plasma is going to hit our planet. They should be able to give a couple of days warning instead of a couple of hours, which would give operators time to put satellites into safe mode before being hit by the CME particles.

Stop Press: by coincidence or design, I don't know, but today's Astronomy Pic of the Day shows a CME.

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