Newswise — Researchers at The University of Alabama in Huntsville will team with scientists across the country on what is being described as the premier solar and heliophysics mission of the 21st century.
UAHuntsville was one of six institutions chose last week by NASA to provide scientific leadership on the Solar Probe Plus.
Gary Zank, Pei Ling Chan Eminent Scholar in Physics and director of UAHuntsville's Center for Space and Aeronomic Research, said this project is one of history’s most significant research initiatives regarding the sun.
“Solar Probe Plus will be the defining mission in solar physics for the next 20 or 30 years and one of the definitive science missions of the 21st century," Dr. Zank said. "This is an opportunity to better understand the Sun's atmosphere, one of the great scientific mysteries in our universe."
The mission will include a 2018 launch of an automobile-sized spacecraft that will fly to within 3.5 million miles of the Sun’s surface, far closer than any previous scientific investigation. The craft will approach the Sun on 35 separate occasions during its eight-year life to study solar weather and solar winds.
The scientific objectives of the probe is to help understand why the outer atmosphere of the Sun is so much hotter than the rest of the Sun, in addition to understand the origins and physics that drive solar storms, such as flares, prominences and coronal mass ejections, according to UAHuntsville Vice President for Research Dr. John Horack. Also, he said Solar Probe Plus will add to our understanding the impact of solar physics on near-Earth space environment, climate and the interaction between the Sun and interplanetary space.
UAHuntsville and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center will provide scientific leadership on one of five science instruments called SWEAP, or Solar Wind Electrons and Alphas and Protons. UAHuntsville and Marshall have $15 million of a $58 million instrument budget for SWEAP.
The university’s role in providing leadership of the science team is the development of models, theoretical predictions, and higher-order data products for delivery to the world science community.
Teamed with UAHuntsville and Marshall Space Flight Center are the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, University of California-Berkeley, MIT and Los Alamos.
"This is the equivalent of a Hubble class mission for solar physics, so it really is dramatic and revolutionary the expectation the data collected will have on the field of solar astrophysics,” said Marshall solar physicist Dr. Jonathan Cirtain.
Zank said winning this proposal is a unique opportunity for UAH students to help develop models, explain observations and understand the secrets of the sun. This research could stretch for the next 15 years.
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