Browse Archive

  • Three coronagraph images of CMEs taken by SOHO with inner disk solar images taken at the same time by SDO.

    SOHO "Pick of the Week" Hits Impressive Milestone

    01.04.12 - In late November, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory's (SOHO) online 'Pick of the Week' reached an impressive milestone: its 500th edition.

  • The RBSP team at JHU/APL, shown here in late November, performs final inspections and testing on spacecraft A's solar arrays and one of the mission's five scientific instruments before the satellites head into acoustic testing.

    RBSP Ready for Space Environment Tests

    12.14.11 - NASA's Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) will soon enter a challenging series of tests to certify they are ready for their August 2012 launch and two-year mission in Earth's orbit.

  • Located between approximately 40-110 miles (60-180 kilometers) above the Earth's surface, the MLTI region is sensitive to external influences from the sun above and atmospheric layers below it.

    Ten Successful Years of Mapping the Middle Atmosphere

    12.07.11 - TIMED has collected data over almost an entire solar cycle, which lasts about 11 years, creating a new picture of Earth's environment as well as how it responds to changes in the sun.

  • Artist concept of CINDI in orbit around Earth.

    CINDI - Coupled Ion-Neutral Dynamics Investigations

    CINDI's mission is to understand the dynamics of the Earth's ionosphere.

  • Artist concept of NASA's Voyager spacecraft

    Voyager 2 Completes Switch to Backup Thruster Set

    11.14.11 - NASA's Voyager 2 has successfully switched to the backup set of thrusters that controls the roll of the spacecraft.

  • Artist's concept shows NASA's two Voyager spacecraft exploring a turbulent region of space known as the heliosheath

    Voyager 2 to Switch to Backup Thruster Set

    11.05.11 - NASA's Deep Space Network personnel sent commands to the Voyager 2 spacecraft today to switch to the backup set of thrusters that controls the roll of the spacecraft.

  • Vivid orange streamers of super-hot, electrically charged gas (plasma) arc from the surface of the Sun, revealing the structure of the solar magnetic field rising vertically from a sunspot.

    Hinode's First Light . . . and Five More Years

    11.01.11 - Five years after its instruments turned on, Hinode has provided some of the highest resolution images of the sun the world had ever seen -- as well as help solve such mysteries as why the sun's atmosphere is a thousand times hotter than its surface.

  • Artist illustration of STEREO spacecraft superimposed over an image taken by STEREO of a coronal mass ejection (CME) that occurred on May 20, 2011.

    STEREO Celebrates Five Years

    10.25.11 - On Oct. 25, 2006 STEREO launched to do something never done before: see the entire sun simultaneously.

  • Diagram of ARTEMIS spacecraft maneuvers to transition from Lissajous orbits on each side of the moon to lunar orbit.

    ARTEMIS Spacecraft Prepare for Lunar Orbit

    06.23.11 - It took one and a half years, over 90 orbit maneuvers, many gravitational boosts and little fuel to move two spacecraft from their orbits around Earth to their new home around the moon.

  • NASA to Study the Radiation Belts

    01.08.2009 - Following a successful confirmation review, NASA has given The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) the go-ahead to continue development of the Radiation Belt Storm Probes, or RBSP mission.

  • From left, Albert Lin, Dan Mabry (seated) and Joe Mazur check over the Relativistic Proton Spectrometer in an APL laboratory

    In the Loop: An Instrumental Milestone

    04.14.2011 - The Radiation Belt Storm Probes team at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory closed February with a flurry of instrument activities and a significant development milestone.

  • The MMS dual electron spectrometer being built in the Goddard clean room.

    Goddard Building Instrument To Study Reconnection

    04.29.11 - At NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, scientists and engineers are working on a crucial element of the the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission to study magnetic reconnection: the Fast Plasma Instrument (FPI).

  • Artist's concept of the IRIS satellite in orbit.

    IRIS - Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph - Launching Late Spring 2013

    The Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) mission opens a window of discovery into the sun's upper layers by tracing the flow of energy and plasma through the chromosphere and transition region into the corona using spectrometry and imaging.

  • Artist's concept of the Solar Orbiter Satellite

    Solar Orbiter  →

    Solar Orbiter is a European Space Agency (ESA) mission to study the Sun from a distance closer than any spacecraft previously has, and will provide images and measurements in unprecedented resolution and detail.

  • A solar eruptive prominence as seen in extreme UV light on March 30, 2010 with Earth superimposed for a sense of scale.

    SDO Celebrates One Year Anniversary

    02.11.11 - Project scientists discuss SDO's first year of science and collaboration with other Heliophysics System Observatory missions.