NASA's Newest Satellite to Provide Most Detailed Look Yet at the Sun's Lower Atmosphere

NASA’s newest satellite is designed to provide the most detailed look yet at the Sun’s lower atmosphere from which most of its ultraviolet emission is generated.

Scheduled for launch on June 26, the Interface Region Imaging Spectograph (IRIS) mission will be tasked with observing how solar material moves, gathers energy and heats up as it travels through the largely unexplored region of the solar atmosphere located between the Sun’s visible surface and upper atmosphere.

In doing so, Jeffrey Newmark, NASA’s IRIS program scientist in Washington, said scientists will gain insight that has been simply unavailable at this point.

"IRIS data will fill a crucial gap in our understanding of the solar interface region upon joining our fleet of heliophysics spacecraft," he said in a news release. "For the first time we will have the necessary observations for understanding how energy is delivered to the million-degree outer solar corona and how the base of the solar wind is driven."

As further evidence of the blending of public and private development in regards to space exploration, the spacecraft was designed by Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Center and will be launched aboard an Orbital Sciences Corp. rocket deployed by the company’s L-1011 aircraft from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

When it blasts off into space, IRIS will carry with it an ultraviolet telescope designed to obtain high-resolution images and spectra every few seconds as well as provide observations of areas as small as 150 miles across the Sun.

"Imagine giant jets like huge fountains that have a footprint the size of Los Angeles and are long enough and fast enough to circle Earth in 20 seconds,” explained Alan Title, IRIS principal investigator at Lockheed Martin. “IRIS will provide our first high-resolution views of these structures along with information about their velocity, temperature and density."

After its launch, IRIS will travel in a polar, sun-synchronous orbit around Earth along a trajectory that will bring it directly over the poles in such a way that it will move over the equator at the same local time each day. In all, the spacecraft will orbit at an altitude range of 390 to 420 miles and will allow for almost continuous solar observations during its two-year mission.