Fwd: Pegasus launch puts solar research craft IRIS in orbit

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From: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Date: June 29, 2013 9:30:21 AM GMT-06:00
To: "Gary Johnson" <gjohnson144@comcast.net>
Subject: FW: Pegasus launch puts solar research craft IRIS in orbit

 

 

Steve Cole
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-0918
stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov
 
Susan M. Hendrix
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
301-286-7745
susan.m.hendrix@nasa.gov
 
Rachel Hoover
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
650-604-0643
rachel.hoover@nasa.gov
 
George H. Diller
Kennedy Space Center, Fla.
321-867-2468
george.h.diller@nasa.gov

June 27, 2013

 

RELEASE : 13-192

 

 

NASA Launches Satellite to Study How Sun's Atmosphere is Energized

 

 

WASHINGTON -- NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) spacecraft launched Thursday at 7:27 p.m. PDT (10:27 p.m. EDT) from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. The mission to study the solar atmosphere was placed in orbit by an Orbital Sciences Corporation Pegasus XL rocket.

"We are thrilled to add IRIS to the suite of NASA missions studying the sun," said John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science in Washington. "IRIS will help scientists understand the mysterious and energetic interface between the surface and corona of the sun."

IRIS is a NASA Explorer Mission to observe how solar material moves, gathers energy and heats up as it travels through a little-understood region in the sun's lower atmosphere. This interface region between the sun's photosphere and corona powers its dynamic million-degree atmosphere and drives the solar wind. The interface region also is where most of the sun's ultraviolet emission is generated. These emissions impact the near-Earth space environment and Earth's climate.

The Pegasus XL carrying IRIS was deployed from an Orbital L-1011 carrier aircraft over the Pacific Ocean at an altitude of 39,000 feet, off the central coast of California about 100 miles northwest of Vandenberg. The rocket placed IRIS into a sun-synchronous polar orbit that will allow it to make almost continuous solar observations during its two-year mission.

The L-1011 took off from Vandenberg at 6:30 p.m. PDT and flew to the drop point over the Pacific Ocean, where the aircraft released the Pegasus XL from beneath its belly. The first stage ignited five seconds later to carry IRIS into space. IRIS successfully separated from the third stage of the Pegasus rocket at 7:40 p.m. At 8:05 p.m., the IRIS team confirmed the spacecraft had successfully deployed its solar arrays, has power and has acquired the sun, indications that all systems are operating as expected.

"Congratulations to the entire team on the successful development and deployment of the IRIS mission," said IRIS project manager Gary Kushner of the Lockheed Martin Solar and Atmospheric Laboratory in Palo Alto, Calif. "Now that IRIS is in orbit, we can begin our 30-day engineering checkout followed by a 30-day science checkout and calibration period."

IRIS is expected to start science observations upon completion of its 60-day commissioning phase. During this phase the team will check image quality and perform calibrations and other tests to ensure a successful mission.

NASA's Explorer Program at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., provides overall management of the IRIS mission. The principal investigator institution is Lockheed Martin Space Systems Advanced Technology Center. NASA's Ames Research Center will perform ground commanding and flight operations and receive science data and spacecraft telemetry.

The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory designed the IRIS telescope. The Norwegian Space Centre and NASA's Near Earth Network provide the ground stations using antennas at Svalbard, Norway; Fairbanks, Alaska; McMurdo, Antarctica; and Wallops Island, Va. NASA's Launch Services Program at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida is responsible for the launch service procurement, including managing the launch and countdown. Orbital Sciences Corporation provided the L-1011 aircraft and Pegasus XL launch system.

For more information about the IRIS mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/iris

 

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Pegasus launch puts solar research craft in orbit BY JUSTIN RAY SPACEFLIGHT NOW June 27, 2013 The newest spacecraft to launch in NASA's oldest program -- the Explorer project that dates back to America's first satellite -- was propelled into Earth orbit Thursday night by an air-launched rocket off the coast of California. Image of the Pegasus XL's launch with the IRIS satellite off the coast of California at 7:27 p.m. PDT Thursday. Credit: NASA TV/Spaceflight Now   The Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph spacecraft, or IRIS, is embarking on a $181 million mission to peer into the mysterious region around the sun where the temperatures dramatically escalate from the surface to the tumultuous atmosphere. "IRIS will fill crucial gaps in our understanding over the role the interface region plays in powering its dynamic million-degree atmosphere, called the corona," said Jeffrey Newmark, IRIS program scientist at NASA Headquarters. Fitted with a 20-centimeter ultraviolet telescope and a multi-channel imaging spectrograph, IRIS will scan across the sun to construct data over a range of heights, temperatures and densities in the solar atmosphere. "What we want to discover is what the basic physical processes are that transfer energy and material from the surface of the sun to the outer atmosphere of the sun -- the corona," said Alan Title, IRIS principal investigator at Lockheed Martin's Advanced Technology Center. "The visible surface, the place where virtually all of the light that leaves the sun leaves from, its about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Immediately above that the temperature rises to the million-degree corna. How that happens is a mystery. What are the processes that occur there?" The data is considered a key ingredient in helping to understand the solar wind and coronal mass ejections that erupt from the sun and can impact the Earth, upsetting power grids, upsetting communications and navigation signals, and be harmful astronauts and satellites. An Orbital Sciences Pegasus XL rocket, making its 42nd flight since 1990 and the last one currently scheduled, departed Vandenberg Air Force Base at 7:30 p.m. local time hooked to the belly of an L-1011 carrier jet under the controls of Don Walter. Flying a pre-determined "race track pattern" northward over the Pacific, the aircraft flew by the drop zone to measure weather conditions while the launch team conducted countdown testing. Making a U-turn offshore from Monterey, the plane dubbed "Stargazer" then headed back southward as the countdown neared drop time. Achieving the precise heading and receiving a final "go" from the ground-based launch officials, co-pilot Ebb Harris pushed a button on the center console of the cockpit that opened hooks holding the rocket and Pegasus was away cleanly. The 51,000-pound, 55-foot-long rocket free-fell for five seconds, dropping 300 feet below the aircraft while traveling at Mach 0.82. During the plunge, the onboard flight computer sensed the rocket's separation from the carrier jet and issue a command to release the safety inhibits in preparation for ignition. At 7:27 p.m. local time, the first stage lit to power the 403-pound IRIS into a sun-synchronous polar orbit around Earth. About 13 minutes after launch, the satellite was cast free from the spent third stage of Pegasus into a slightly elliptical orbit of 420 by 385 miles, as planned, at an inclination of 98 degrees to the equator, circling the planet every 97 minutes from pole to pole. The orbit flies along the dawn-dusk line, provides eight months of continuous observations per year and maximizes eclipse-free viewing of the sun, officials said. Photo of the IRIS spacecraft undergoing assembly and testing in a clean room. Credit: Lockheed Martin  In about 21 days, the telescope's door will be opened and the commissioning process should be completed to start the science mission in about 60 days. "IRIS is about a factor of 10 higher resolution than any other instrument that has explored this region and, even more importantly, it's about a factor of 20 faster. So it can take images about once a second. This is critical because the processes that occur in this part of the atmosphere happen very, very fast," Title said. The mission's goal is observing how solar material moves, gets heated and energized through this unexplored region around the sun. "Previous observations suggest there are structures in this region of the solar atmosphere 100 to 150 miles wide, but 100,000 miles long," Title said. "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. IRIS will provide our first high-resolution views of these structures along with information about their velocity, temperature and density." At just 7 feet long and 4 feet in diameter at its rear, the satellite grew to 12 feet in width from tip-to-tip shortly after launch when the power-generating solar arrays were unfolded. "IRIS is small, light-weight, low-power satellite designed to perform complex solar observations," said Gary Kushner, IRIS program manager at Lockheed Martin's Advanced Technology Center. With no onboard fuel or consumables, designers expect IRIS to long surpass its two-year mission life, perhaps operating for a couple of decades, said John Marmie, IRIS assistant project manager at NASA's Ames Research Center. The mission operations strategy calls for a morning science team meeting to make requests to flight controllers who write commands that are uplinked to the spacecraft to execute. One command load will be sent up IRIS every weekday and the resulting science data made available online for scientists and general public within hours. "We have preplanned a large number of observing sequences that are targeted to seeing things like solar flares," Title said. IRIS will work in concert with NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory that monitors the sun's surface and the joint Japanese-U.S. Hinode spacecraft studying the sun's outer atmosphere. "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," Newmark said.

 

 

© 2013 Spaceflight Now Inc.

 

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Pegasus rocket carries sun-study satellite into orbit

06/27/2013 11:12 PM 

By WILLIAM HARWOOD
CBS News

A winged Pegasus rocket lifted a compact solar observatory into orbit around Earth's poles Thursday, kicking off a $181 million mission to shed light on a major mystery: what heats up the sun's outer atmosphere to extreme temperatures and how that, in turn, affects Earth's space weather.

NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, spacecraft will focus on the dynamic zone between the sun's 6,000-degree visible surface -- the photosphere -- and the tenuous corona, which is somehow heated to more than a million degrees over a span of a few thousand miles.

An Orbital Sciences Pegasus XL rocket carrying a new sun-study satellite falls away from the company's carrier jet moments before first stage ignition. (Credit: NASA TV)

 

Scientists hope to gain insights into the energy transport mechanisms that drive the solar wind -- the supersonic stream of atomic particles blasted away from the sun -- solar flares and explosive eruptions known as coronal mass ejections that occasionally disrupt power grids, satellite operations and communications on Earth.

"What we want to discover is what the basic physical processes are that transfer energy and material from the surface of the sun to the outer atmosphere of the sun, the corona," Alan Title, IRIS principal investigator at Lockheed Martin's Advanced Technology Center, told reporters before launch.

"The visible surface (is) the place where virtually all of the light that leaves the sun leaves from. Immediately above that, the temperature rises to the million-degree corona. How that happens is a mystery. What are the processes that occur there?"

Making the program's 42nd flight, the Orbital Sciences Pegasus XL rocket was carried aloft from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., by an L-1011 carrier jet.

The Orbital Sciences "Stargazer" jet carried the 51,000-pound rocket to a pre-determined drop point over the Pacific Ocean and, after final tests were completed, released the Pegasus at a planned altitude of 39,000 feet at 10:27 p.m. EDT (GMT-4; 7:27 p.m. local time).

A few seconds later, 300 feet below the carrier jet and gliding southward at about slightly more than 80 percent the speed of sound, the Pegasus XL's first stage solid-fuel motor ignited with a rush of exhaust and the spacecraft quickly shot away toward space.

The solid-fuel first-stage motor of the Pegasus XL rocket roars to life above the Pacific Ocean, pushing the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, spacecraft toward orbit. (Credit: NASA TV)

All three stages of the Pegasus XL rocket appeared to operate normally and about 13 minutes after launch, telemetry indicated the 403-pound IRIS spacecraft had been released into an orbit tilted 98 degrees to the equator with a high point of about 420 miles and a low point of some 385 miles.

"We're thrilled. We're very excited," said Launch Director Tim Dunn. "The spacecraft, we've made initial contact with it (through a NASA communications satellite). We've gotten good data back. The solar arrays did begin to deploy and everything is proceeding right on track."

It will take engineers about two months to check out the spacecraft's systems, calibrate its instruments and begin routine science observations. The trajectory was designed to ensure about eight months of uninterrupted observations each year.

The solar powered IRIS spacecraft is equipped with an 8-inch telescope and a multi-channel imaging spectrograph that will study ultraviolet emissions from the corona and the interface between it and the sun's visible-light surface.

Title said IRIS has "about a factor of 10 higher resolution than any other instrument that has explored this region and, even more importantly, it's about a factor of 20 faster. So it can take images about once a second. This is critical because the processes that occur in this part of the atmosphere happen very, very fast."

"Previous observations suggest there are structures in this region of the solar atmosphere 100 to 150 miles wide, but 100,000 miles long," he said. "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. IRIS will provide our first high-resolution views of these structures along with information about their velocity, temperature and density."

IRIS data will complement observations by the much larger, and more expensive, Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft.

"IRIS almost acts as a microscope to SDO's telescope," Hall said in a NASA overview. "It's going to look in closely and it's going to look at that specific region to see how the changes in matter and energy occur in this region. It's going to collectively bring us a more complete view of the sun."

© 2011 William Harwood/CBS New

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New NASA satellite to begin sun-watching mission

Associated Press

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Associated Press/NASA,VAFB, Randy Beaudoin,File - File-This undated image provided by NASA shows technicians preparing at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. for the launch of NASA's latest satellite, Interface …more 

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. (AP) — From its perch in low-Earth orbit, NASA's newest satellite will soon get a close-up look at a little-explored region of the sun that's thought to drive space weather that can affect Earth.

The Iris satellite was boosted into orbit about 400 miles above Earth by a Pegasus rocket Thursday evening after a sunset launch. Engineers will test the satellite first before turning on its telescope to stare at the sun.

"We're thrilled," NASA launch director Tim Dunn said in a NASA TV interview after orbit was achieved.

Unlike a typical launch, an airplane carrying the rocket and satellite flew from Vandenberg Air Force Base to a drop point over the Pacific some 100 miles off California's central coast. At an altitude of 39,000 feet, the plane released the rocket, which ignited its engine and streaked skyward.

Mission controllers anxiously waited as the rocket made the 13-minute climb into space and cheered after learning that Iris had separated from the rocket as planned.

There were some issues. At one point, communications signals were lost and ground controllers had to track Iris using other satellites orbiting Earth. When it came time for Iris to unfurl its solar panels after entering orbit, there was a lag before NASA confirmed the satellite was generating power.

Previous sun-observing spacecraft have yielded a wealth of information about our nearest star and beamed back brilliant pictures of solar flares.

The 7-foot-long Iris, weighing 400 pounds, carries an ultraviolet telescope that can take high-resolution images every few seconds.

Unlike NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which observes the entire sun, Iris will focus on a little-explored region that lies between the surface and the corona, the glowing white ring that's visible during eclipses.

The goal is to learn more about how this mysterious region drives solar wind — a stream of charged particles spewing from the sun — and to better predict space weather that can disrupt communications signals on Earth.

"This is a very difficult region to understand and observe. We haven't had the technical capabilities before now to really zoom in" and peer at it up close, NASA program scientist Jeffrey Newmark said before the launch.

The mission is cheap by NASA standards, costing $182 million, and is managed by the space agency's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Iris will gaze at the sun for two years. Before observations can begin, engineers will spend two months conducting health checkups.

Thursday's launch was delayed by a day so that technicians at the Air Force base could restore power to launch range equipment after a weekend outage cut electricity to a swath of the central coast.

The Pegasus, from Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., is a winged rocket designed for launching small satellites. First flown in 1990, Pegasus rockets have also been used to accelerate vehicles in hypersonic flight programs.

 

Copyright © 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. 

 

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NASA Launches Sun-Watching Telescope to Probe Solar Secrets

by Mike Wall, SPACE.com Senior Writer

27 June 2013 Time: 10:40 PM ET

 

 

NASA's IRIS sun-observing telescope launches toward space on an Orbital Sciences Pegasus XL rocket just after its separation from an L-1011 carrier aircraft over the Pacific Ocean on June 27, 2013. CREDIT: NASA TV  View full size image

NASA's newest solar observatory launched into space late Thursday (June 27), beginning a two-year quest to probe some of the sun's biggest mysteries.

An Orbital Sciences Corp. Pegasus XL rocket and the new solar telescope — called the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph satellite, or IRIS — left California's Vandenberg Air Force Base underneath a specially modified aircraft at 9:30 p.m. EDT Thursday (6:30 p.m. local time; 0130 GMT Friday).

Nearly one hour later, at 10:27 p.m. EDT (7:27 p.m. local time), the plane dropped its payload 39,000 feet (11,900 meters) above the Pacific Ocean, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northwest of Vandenberg. After a five-second freefall, the Pegasus rocket roared to life and carried the sun-watching IRIS into Earth orbit. [NASA's IRIS Solar Observatory Mission in Pictures]

"We're thrilled. We're very excited," NASA launch director Tim Dunn said just after the successful blastoff. "We've gotten good data back. The solar arrays did begin to deploy and everything is proceeding right on track."

Scientists hope IRIS' observations help them better understand how energy and material move around the sun. They want to know, for example, why the outer atmosphere of the sun is more than 1,000 times hotter than the star's surface.

Solar mysteries

IRIS is part of NASA's Small Explorer program, which caps the cost of a space mission at $120 million. Like its budget, the spacecraft is small, weighing just 400 pounds (181 kilograms) and measuring 7 by 12 feet (2.1 by 3.7 m) with its power-generating solar panels deployed.

Artist's concept of the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) satellite in orbit. The sun-observing telescope is launching in June 2013.
CREDIT: NASA

View full size image

After a 60-day checkout period on orbit, IRIS will begin its science campaign. The probe will stare at a mysterious sliver of the sun between the solar surface and its outer atmosphere, or corona.

Researchers hope a better understanding of this interface region, which is just 3,000 to 6,000 miles (4,800 to 9,600 kilometers) wide, helps explain why temperatures jump from 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5,500 degrees Celsius) at the sun's surface to 1.8 million degrees F (1 million degrees C) or so in the corona.

"What causes this rise? How does the energy transfer from the surface, the cool surface, to this hot outer atmosphere?" Jeffrey Newmark, IRIS program scientist at NASA Heaquarters in Washington, D.C., said Tuesday (June 25) during a prelaunch mission briefing. "These are the questions that IRIS, the science of IRIS, is going to address."

A more focused look at the sun

While other NASA solar spacecraft — such as the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and the two STEREO (Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory) probes — record views of the entire sun, IRIS' spectrograph will focus on just 1 percent of our star at a time, resolving features as little as 150 miles (240 km) across.

IRIS' relatively narrow view should complement other solar probes' broader look nicely, mission scientists said.

"Relating observations from IRIS to other solar observatories will open the door for crucial research into basic, unanswered questions about the corona," Joe Davila, IRIS project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said in a statement.

Members of the public at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., watch a live video feed of the agency's IRIS solar telescope as it soars toward space from a drop point over the Pacific Ocean on June 27, 2013.
CREDIT: NASA Ames Research Center

View full size image

IRIS was orginally slated to launch Wednesday (June 26), but a power outage across California's central coast knocked out key elements of Vandenberg's tracking and telemetry systems, causing a one-day delay.

Powerful sun storms can wreak havoc with electrical grids here on Earth. So the delay was appropriate in a way, highlighting the importance of IRIS' mission, said Pete Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field,  Calif., which is responsible for IRIS mission operations and ground data systems.

"The better we can understand the physics going on, the better we can understand the [solar] activity, the better that we can potentially predict and mitigate some of these problems," Worden said Tuesday.

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