NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the US are set to launch a joint mission on Wednesday to study the sun and bolster protections for Earth against disruptive solar storms that can derail technology and power systems, according to reports.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 is scheduled to lift off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center carrying three spacecraft designed to track solar activity and its effects on Earth, according to ABC.
“It is extremely urgent for us to actually understand what our sun is doing for us,” NASA science chief Nicky Fox told ABC News. She said NASA will focus on astronaut safety while NOAA leads forecast services for civilian use.
The payload includes NOAA’s SWFO-L1, the agency’s first observatory fully dedicated to space-weather monitoring, NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, which will study Earth’s outermost atmospheric layer, and the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, or IMAP, which will measure solar particles and map the heliospheric boundary that helps shield the solar system from interstellar radiation.
All three will operate near the sun-facing L1 point, about 1 million miles from Earth, providing a continuous view of solar conditions.
Fox said space weather can degrade GPS accuracy and affect aviation, energy grids, mining and precision agriculture, likening solar-storm tracking to hurricane forecasting. “All three satellites together … show how the sun influences not only Earth but the whole solar system,” she said.
