NASA will launch next week aobservatorywhose central objective will betransmit photographs of the sunto unveil its main mysteries. TheSolar Dynamic Observatory, known by the acronym SDO, will depart mounted on an Atlas V rocket from Kennedy Space Center (USA). Your telescopes will studysolar spots and storms? with more pixels and colors than any other observatory in the history of solar physics ?, as announced by the space agency.
How intense will the next solar cycle be? Can we predict when a violent solar storm will launch particles onto Earth? Could a period of inactivity in the Sun plunge us into a prolonged winter?
These are some of the questions that scientists intend to answer with the help of the new SDO observatory. Liz Citrin of the Goddard Center for Space Flight says the images from the observatory will helpunderstand the dynamics of the Sun, but above all they will provide the instruments forpredict their behavior.
Through the helioseismic and magnetic imager (HMI), the observatory will make available to scientistsevery 10 seconds a high definition image of the Sun(equivalent in quality to an IMAX film), 24 hours a day. Over the next five years, the probe is expected to send1.5 terabytes of datato Earth every day. This implies, according to Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Center, “an amount of scientific data almost 50 times greater than any other mission in NASA history“.
Another instrument on board, the Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment (EVE) will measure how much energy the star emits at ultraviolet wavelengths. Although our atmosphere protects us from these radiations, humans who travel into space, such as the occupants of the International Space Station (ISS), are exposed to its dangerous effects.
