{"id":12539,"date":"2020-04-10T20:36:24","date_gmt":"2020-04-10T12:36:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/nasa-satellite-ends-17-year-mission-measuring-the-suns-impact-on-climate\/"},"modified":"2020-04-10T20:36:24","modified_gmt":"2020-04-10T12:36:24","slug":"nasa-satellite-ends-17-year-mission-measuring-the-suns-impact-on-climate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/nasa-satellite-ends-17-year-mission-measuring-the-suns-impact-on-climate\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA satellite ends 17-year mission measuring the sun\u2019s impact on climate"},"content":{"rendered":"

EDITOR\u2019S NOTE: <\/strong>Updated April 13 to include mention of the University of Colorado\u2019s role in the mission.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The SORCE spacecraft undergoes preparations for launch. Credit: NASA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NASA has shut down a spacecraft that measured the amount of solar energy entering Earth\u2019s atmosphere for 17 years, more than three times the mission\u2019s original design life.<\/p>\n

The Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment, or SORCE, mission ended Feb. 25 after the spacecraft labored through battery problems for years until NASA could launch a replacement.<\/p>\n

SORCE\u2019s four science instruments monitored the amount, spectrum and fluctuations in solar energy entering Earth\u2019s atmosphere, according to NASA. Measurements of the solar energy, called solar irradiance, helps scientists understand how much variations in the sun\u2019s output are responsible for Earth\u2019s changing climate.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese measurements are important for two reasons,\u201d said Dong Wu, project scientist for SORCE at NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center. \u201cClimate scientists need to know how much the sun varies, so they know how much change in the Earth\u2019s climate is due to solar variation.<\/p>\n

\u201cSecondly, we\u2019ve debated for years, is the sun getting brighter or dimmer over hundreds of years? We live only a short period, but an accurate trend will become very important,\u201d Wu said in a statement. \u201cIf you know how the sun is varying and can extend that knowledge into the future, you can then put the anticipated future solar input into climate models together with other information, like trace gas concentrations, to estimate what our future climate will be.\u201d<\/p>\n

NASA says that greenhouse gas emissions coming from human activity has had more than 50 times the influence of the slight increase in solar energy in causing warming temperatures on Earth since 1750.<\/p>\n

Built by Orbital Sciences Corp., the SORCE spacecraft flew into orbit Jan. 25, 2003, on an air-launched Pegasus XL rocket dropped over the Atlantic Ocean east of Florida.<\/p>\n

The mission was designed to last at least five years, but SORCE accumulated 17 years of measurements before NASA ended spacecraft operations in February.<\/p>\n

The SORCE mission was led by Tom Woods, the principal investigator from the University of Colorado\u2019s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, LASP. Mission controllers operated the satellite from a LASP facility.<\/p>\n

SORCE provided more accurate measurements of solar irradiance than previous space missions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe mission length also enabled valuable measurements during two of the sun\u2019s 11-year cycles,\u201d wrote Eric Moyer, deputy project manager for NASA\u2019s Earth science mission operations. \u201cSORCE data provide a unique understanding of how the flow of energy from the sun varies and how these variations impact Earth\u2019s weather, climate systems, and, ultimately, all life on Earth that depends on solar irradiance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eight years into the mission, SORCE suffered from battery degradation that began to impact operations. The battery issues eventually prevented SORCE from full-time measurements, and ground teams switched to a daytime-only observations.<\/p>\n

The change effectively allowed SORCE to operate with no functioning battery, keeping the mission going until a replacement could be developed and launched. NASA\u2019s Glory spacecraft, which would have continued SORCE\u2019s observations, was lost in a launch failure in 2011.<\/p>\n

A stopgap solar irradiance instrument launched in 2013 on a U.S. Air Force satellite, but a full replacement for SORCE did not launch until December 2017, when the Total and Spectral solar Irradiance Sensor was delivered to the International Space Station.<\/p>\n

The TSIS 1 instrument outside the space station extends the continuous the record of total solar irradiance data collected by space missions since 1978.<\/p>\n

After a period of overlapping measurements with TSIS 1, NASA decided to turn off the aging SORCE spacecraft in February. Controllers powered off the spacecraft\u2019s instruments, and disabled the satellite\u2019s reaction wheels and radio communication systems.<\/p>\n

NASA says the SORCE satellite, which does not have its own propulsion system, is projected to re-enter the atmosphere in 2032. Most of the spacecraft is expected to burn up during re-entry.<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EDITOR\u2019S NOTE: Updated April 13 to include mention of the University of Colorado\u2019s 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\u2019s atmosphere for 17 years, more than three times the mission\u2019s original design life. The Solar Radiation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[594,190,2260,2261,2170,2262,2263],"class_list":["post-12539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-earth-science","tag-nasa","tag-orbital-sciences","tag-sorce","tag-sun","tag-total-solar-irradiance","tag-tsis"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12539"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12539\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}