Tag: Sun
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First images from Solar Orbiter mission bring sun into sharper focus
The first images from the European-built Solar Orbiter mission are the closest ever taken of the sun, revealing previously unseen mini-flares nicknamed “campfires” that may offer hints about what makes the solar corona, or outer atmosphere, hotter than the sun’s surface. The European Space Agency-led Solar Orbiter mission, built and launched in partnership with…
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NASA satellite ends 17-year mission measuring the sun’s impact on climate
EDITOR’S NOTE: Updated April 13 to include mention of the University of Colorado’s role in the mission. The SORCE spacecraft undergoes preparations for launch. Credit: NASA NASA has shut down a spacecraft that measured the amount of solar energy entering Earth’s atmosphere for 17 years, more than three times the mission’s original design life. The Solar Radiation…
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Swarm of NASA nanosats to probe source of solar eruptions
This image from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory in 2013 shows the bright light of a solar flare on the left side of the sun and an eruption of solar material shooting through the sun’s atmosphere, called a prominence eruption. This same region of the sun sent a coronal mass ejection out into space. Credit: NASA/SDO…
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NASA selects missions to observe the sun and its impact on Earth
An eruption from the sun on April 16, 2012, was captured here by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. Credit: NASA NASA has selected two satellite missions for launch on the same rocket in 2022 to investigate the origins of the solar wind and explore the interaction between magnetic fields around Earth with those from the sun.…
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Parker Solar Probe sets records during first encounter with the sun
EDITOR’S NOTE: Updated Nov. 8 with confirmation of Parker Solar Probe’s health after perihelion. Artist’s concept of NASA’s Parker Solar Probe. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/Steve Gribben Less than three months after its fiery departure from Cape Canaveral, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe flew within 15 million miles (24 million kilometers) of the sun Monday for the $1.5 billion mission’s…
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Pioneering ESA mission aims to create artificial solar eclipses
Due to launch together in 2020, the two satellites making up Proba-3 will fly in precise formation to form an external coronagraph in space, one satellite eclipsing the sun to allow the second to study the otherwise invisible solar corona. Credit: ESA As skywatchers and scientists converge on a transcontinental band of totality for Monday’s…
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NASA unveils renamed solar probe
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION NASA’s first mission to go to the sun, the Parker Solar Probe, is named after Eugene Parker who first theorized that the sun constantly sends out a flow of particles and energy called the solar wind. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL A NASA spacecraft being readied for launch in 2018 will…
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Delta 4-Heavy selected for launch of solar probe
File photo of a Delta 4-Heavy rocket launch in June 2012. Credit: ULA A NASA spacecraft that will fly closer to the sun than any mission before will launch on a Delta 4-Heavy rocket in 2018, requiring a boost from the largest active launcher in the U.S. inventory and repeated flybys around Venus to reach…