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The Multi-spectral solar telescope array, or MSSTA, was a sounding rocket
Sounding rocket

A sounding rocket, sometimes called a research rocket, is an instrument-carrying rocket designed to take measurements and perform scientific experiments during its sub-orbital spaceflight flight....
 payload built by Professor A.B.C. Walker, Jr. at Stanford University
Stanford University

Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private university research university located in Stanford, California, California, United States....
 in the 1990s to test EUV/XUV
Ultraviolet

Ultraviolet light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than that of visible light, but longer than x-rays, in the range 400 nanometer to 10 nm, and energies from 3 Electron volt to 124 eV....
 imaging of the Sun using normal incidence EUV-reflective multilayer optics. MSSTA contained a large number of individual telescopes (> 10), all trained on the Sun and all sensitive to slightly different wavelength
Wavelength

In physics, wavelength is the distance between repeating units of a propagating wave of a given frequency. It is commonly designated by the Greek language letter lambda ....
s of ultraviolet light.






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Mssta Launch
The Multi-spectral solar telescope array, or MSSTA, was a sounding rocket
Sounding rocket

A sounding rocket, sometimes called a research rocket, is an instrument-carrying rocket designed to take measurements and perform scientific experiments during its sub-orbital spaceflight flight....
 payload built by Professor A.B.C. Walker, Jr. at Stanford University
Stanford University

Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private university research university located in Stanford, California, California, United States....
 in the 1990s to test EUV/XUV
Ultraviolet

Ultraviolet light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than that of visible light, but longer than x-rays, in the range 400 nanometer to 10 nm, and energies from 3 Electron volt to 124 eV....
 imaging of the Sun using normal incidence EUV-reflective multilayer optics. MSSTA contained a large number of individual telescopes (> 10), all trained on the Sun and all sensitive to slightly different wavelength
Wavelength

In physics, wavelength is the distance between repeating units of a propagating wave of a given frequency. It is commonly designated by the Greek language letter lambda ....
s of ultraviolet light. Like all sounding rockets, MSSTA flew for approximately 14 minutes per mission, about 5 minutes of which were in space -- just enough time to test a new technology or yield "first results" science. MSSTA is one of the last solar observing instruments to use photographic film
Photographic film

Photographic film is a sheet of plastic coated with an emulsion containing light-sensitive silver halide salts with variable crystal sizes that determine the sensitivity, contrast and of the film....
 rather than a digital camera
Digital camera

A digital camera is a camera that takes video or still photographs, or both, digitally by recording digital image via an electronics .Many compact digital still cameras can record sound and moving video as well as still photographs....
 system such as a CCD
Charge-coupled device

A charge-coupled device is an analog signal shift register that enables the transportation of analog signals through successive stages , controlled by a clock signal....
. MSSTA used film instead of a CCD in order to achieve the highest possible spatial resolution and to avoid the electronics difficulty presented by the large number of detectors that would have been required for its many telescopes.

MSSTA and its sister rocket, NIXT
NIXT

The NIXT, or Normal Incidence X-ray Telescope, was a sounding rocket payload flown in the 1990s by Professor Leon Golub of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, to prototype normal-incidence optical designs in extreme ultraviolet solar imaging....
, were prototypes for normal incidence EUV imaging telescopes that are in use today, such as the EIT instrument
Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope

The Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope is an Measuring instrument on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory spacecraft used to obtain high-resolution s of the sun corona in the ultraviolet range....
 aboard the SOHO
Solar and Heliospheric Observatory

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory is a spacecraft that was launched on a Lockheed Martin Atlas II launch vehicle on December 2, 1995 to study the Sun, and began normal operations in May 1996....
 spacecraft, and the TRACE
Trace

Trace may refer to:Mathematics, computing and electronics:* Trace of a square matrix or a linear transformation* Trace of a surgery on a manifold...
 spacecraft. MSSTA flew three times: once in 1991 (NASA Sounding Rocket flight 36.049), once in 1994 (flight 36.091), and once in 2002. While Dr. Walker's 1991 telescope was the first in the series to carry the MSSTA moniker, the precursor to the MSSTA, the Stanford/MSFC Rocket Spectroheliograph (NASA Sounding Rocket flight 27.092), which carried two EUV telescopes in 1987, was the first mission to successfully obtain high-resolution, full-disk solar images utilizing normal incidence EUV optics. The MSSTA I flown in 1991 carried 14 telescopes; the MSSTA II flown in 1994 carried 19 telescopes; and the MSSTA III flown in 2002 carried 11 telescopes.

Several Stanford Ph.D. degrees in Physics resulted from the MSSTA program. These include those earned by Dr. Joakim Lindblom, Dr. Maxwell J. Allen, Dr. Ray H. O'Neal, Dr. Craig E. DeForest, Dr. Charles C. Kankelborg, Dr. Hakeem M. Oluseyi, Dr. Dennis S. Martinez-Galarce, and Dr. Paul F.X. Boerner.

Mssta Assembly