Set for launch Tuesday, a $32 million instrument package devised by the University of Colorado at Boulder should yield a better understanding of how the sun can violently affect Earth.
When the sun acts up, it can affect satellites, power grids, astronauts, aircraft routing and crews, GPS, ground communications, cellphones and BlackBerrys.
Called the Solar Dynamics Observatory, the spacecraft will pry into how solar activity occurs and the resulting space weather.
“Data returned from this mission will have a huge impact on our ability to create better space weather models and to mitigate the potentially damaging effects of space weather,” said Dan Baker, director of CU’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.
The craft’s instruments will take measurements every 10 seconds and at 10 times the previous resolution.
“We can look at the data every minute, 24 hours a day, to help us forecast what the sun is doing,” said CU senior research associate Tom Woods, who is the instrument package’s principal investigator.
About 80 LASP engineers and 40 undergraduate and graduate students have been involved with the effort. Over eight years, they have researched, designed and built two spectrographs that will measure fluctuations in the sun’s extreme ultraviolet.
Lockheed Martin’s Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory in Palo Alto, Calif., built another instrument with Stanford University that will map the sun’s magnetic fields and peer beneath the sun’s surface.
Sending the 6,800-pound craft aloft will be an Atlas V provided by United Launch Alliance. This will be the Centennial company’s 38th launch since it was formed in December 2006.
Ann Schrader: 303-954-1967 or aschrader@denverpost.com
