SAN FRANCISCO – Researchers will have rare opportunities over the next year to study solar flares and coronal mass ejections, observations that could lead to improved space weather forecasts.
During the April 8, 2024, total solar eclipse, NASA will gather data on the sun’s corona from instruments mounted on satellites, aircraft and sounding rockets.
“The moon is a perfect coronagraph,” Kelly Korreck, NASA eclipse program manager, said Dec. 11 at the American Geophysical Union conferenced here.
NASA researchers will compare computer models of the sun’s corona with imagery gathered during the eclipse from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe and the European Space Agency-NASA Solar Orbiter.
The various perspectives will give researchers a “3D understanding of the corona as well because you can triangulate a lot of different structures that we see from Earth and in another direction from the Solar Orbiter,” said Amir Caspi, Southwest Research Institute principal scientist.
In addition, NASA will gather multispectral coronal imagery from instruments sent aloft on a pair of WB-57F jets. And sounding rockets launched from Wallops Island, Virginia, will eject magnetometers, accelerometers and other instruments to monitor the ionosphere.
“Now instead of validating models with just one view, we can validate them with multiple views,” Nour Raouafi, Parker Solar Probe project scientist the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab.
Parker’s Close Approach
Launched in 2018, the Parker Solar Probe’s closest solar approach is set for Dec. 24, 2024. At that time, the probe will be 6.1 million kilometers from the sun’s surface. For comparison, Mercury is 58 million kilometers from the sun.
By traveling closer to the sun than any previous spacecraft, the Parker Solar Probe could obtain observations that help explain perplexing solar activity.
“The solar corona by nature is so mysterious,” Raouafi said. “It is over…
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