NASA selects instrument for solar study on ESA mission

Written by Copernical Team Friday, 24 May 2024 20:22

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Los Angeles CA (SPX) May 23, 2024

NASA has selected a new instrument to study the Sun and its massive solar eruptions. The Joint EUV coronal Diagnostic Investigation (JEDI) will capture images of the Sun in extreme ultraviolet light, revealing the mechanisms of the Sun's activity. JEDI's two telescopes will be integrated into the ESA's (European Space Agency's) Vigil space weather mission. They will focus on the middle lay

NASA selects instrument for solar study on ESA mission
by Clarence Oxford
Los Angeles CA (SPX) May 23, 2024

NASA has selected a new instrument to study the Sun and its massive solar eruptions. The Joint EUV coronal Diagnostic Investigation (JEDI) will capture images of the Sun in extreme ultraviolet light, revealing the mechanisms of the Sun's activity.

JEDI's two telescopes will be integrated into the ESA's (European Space Agency's) Vigil space weather mission. They will focus on the middle layer of the solar corona, the region of the Sun's atmosphere that plays a key role in creating the solar wind and eruptions causing space weather.

The Vigil space mission, scheduled to launch in 2031, will provide continuous space weather data from the Sun-Earth Lagrange point 5, a gravitationally stable point 60 degrees behind Earth in its orbit. This position will offer researchers and forecasters a new perspective on the Sun and its eruptions. JEDI will be the first instrument to constantly view the Sun from this perspective in extreme ultraviolet light, offering new data for research and supporting Vigil's space weather monitoring.

"JEDI's observations will help us link the features we see on the Sun's surface with what we measure in the solar atmosphere, the corona," said Nicola Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Combined with Vigil's first-of-its-kind, eagle eye view of the Sun, this will change the way we understand the Sun's drivers of space weather - which in turn can lead to improved warnings to mitigate space weather effects on satellites and humans in space as well as on Earth."

The project is led by Don Hassler at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. It is funded by the NASA Heliophysics Space Weather Program with a total cost not exceeding $45 million. Management oversight will be provided by the Living With a Star Program of the Explorers and Heliophysics Projects Division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.