Solar Maximum Mission - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Solar Maximum Mission satellite

Satellite

In the context of spaceflight, a satellite is an object which has been placed into orbit by human endeavour. Such objects are sometimes called artificial satellites to distinguish them from natural satellites such as the Moon....

(or SolarMax) was designed to investigate solar phenomenon, particularly solar flares. It was launched on February 14, 1980.

Although not unique in this endeavor, the SMM was notable in that its useful life compared with similar spacecraft

Spacecraft

A spacecraft or spaceship is a craft or machine designed for spaceflight. Spacecraft are used for a variety of purposes, including communications, earth observation, meteorology, navigation, planetary exploration and transportation of humans and cargo....

was significantly increased by the direct intervention of a manned space mission. During STS-41-C

STS-41-C

STS-41-C was NASA's 11th Space Shuttle mission, and the fifth mission of Space Shuttle Challenger. The launch on 6 April 1984 was the first direct ascent trajectory for a shuttle mission...

in 1984, the Space Shuttle Challenger

Space Shuttle Challenger

Space Shuttle Challenger was NASA's second Space Shuttle orbiter to be put into service, Columbia having been the first. The shuttle was built by Rockwell International's Space Transportation Systems Division in Downey, California...

intercepted the SMM, maneuvering it into the shuttle's payload bay for maintenance and repairs. SMM had been fitted with a shuttle "grapple fixture" so that the shuttle's robot arm could grab it for repair. The mission was depicted in the 1985 IMAX

IMAX

IMAX is a motion picture film format and a set of proprietary cinema projection standards created by the Canadian company IMAX Corporation. IMAX has the capacity to record and display images of far greater size and resolution than conventional film systems...

movie The Dream Is Alive
The Dream Is Alive
The Dream is Alive is an IMAX movie, released in June 1985, about NASA's Space Shuttle program. The film was narrated by Walter Cronkite, and directed by Graeme Ferguson.-Synopsis:...

.

The Solar Maximum Mission ended on December 2, 1989, when the spacecraft re-entered the atmosphere

Atmospheric reentry

Atmospheric entry is the movement of human-made or natural objects as they enter the atmosphere of a celestial body from outer space—in the case of Earth from an altitude above the Kármán Line,...

and burned up.

Instruments

Experiments on board the Solar Maximum Mission
Name	Target	Principal Investigator
Coronagraph/Polarimeter: 446.5-658.3 nm, 1.5- 6 sq.solar radii fov Field of view The field of view is the extent of the observable world that is seen at any given moment.... , 6.4 arcsec res.	solar corona, prominences, and flares	MacQueen, Robert M, High Altitude Observatory High Altitude Observatory The High Altitude Observatory conducts research and provides support and facilities for the solar-terrestrial research community in the areas of solar and heliospheric physics, and the effects of solar variability on the Earth's magnetosphere, ionosphere, and upper atmosphere.HAO is a laboratory...
Ultraviolet Spectrometer and polarimeter 175.0-360.0 nm raster imager, 0.004 nm sp.res.	solar UV, Earth Earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets... 's atmosphere Atmosphere An atmosphere is a layer of gases that may surround a material body of sufficient mass, and that is held in place by the gravity of the body. An atmosphere may be retained for a longer duration, if the gravity is high and the atmosphere's temperature is low...	Tandberg-Hanssen, Einar A, NASA NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research... Marshall Space Flight Center Marshall Space Flight Center The George C. Marshall Space Flight Center is the U.S. government's civilian rocketry and spacecraft propulsion research center. The largest center of NASA, MSFC's first mission was developing the Saturn launch vehicles for the Apollo moon program...
Soft X-ray Polychromator: raster imager, crystal spectrom. in parts of 0.14-2.25 nm	solar flares, active solar regions	Acton, Loren W Loren Acton Loren Wilber Acton is an American physicist who flew on Space Shuttle mission STS-51-F as a Payload Specialist for the Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratory.Acton was born in Lewistown, Montana... Lockheed Palo Alto Lockheed Corporation The Lockheed Corporation was an American aerospace company. Lockheed was founded in 1912 and later merged with Martin Marietta to form Lockheed Martin in 1995.-Origins:... , Culhane, J University College, London, Leonard, Gabriel, Alan-Henri, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory Rutherford Appleton Laboratory The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory is one of the national scientific research laboratories in the UK operated by the Science and Technology Facilities Council . It is located on the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus at Chilton near Didcot in Oxfordshire, United Kingdom...
Hard X-ray Imaging Spectrometer: fov Field of view The field of view is the extent of the observable world that is seen at any given moment.... 6.4 arcmin, 8 or 32 arcsec res, 3.5-30 keV	solar active regions and flares	de Jager, Cornelis, University of Utrecht
Hard X-ray Burst Spectrometer: CsI(Na), 15 energy channels covering 20-260 keV	solar flares and active regions	Frost, Kenneth J NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Gamma-ray Spectrometer: NaI(T1),0.01-100 MeV in 476 channels, 16.4 s per spectrum	solar gamma-rays	Chupp, Edward L, University of New Hampshire University of New Hampshire The University of New Hampshire is a public university in the University System of New Hampshire , United States. The main campus is in Durham, New Hampshire. An additional campus is located in Manchester. With over 15,000 students, UNH is the largest university in New Hampshire. The university is...
Active Cavity Radiometer Irradiance Monitor: 0.001-1000 micrometer solar flux	solar irradiance	Willson, Richard C, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Significantly, the SMM's ACRIM instrument package showed that, contrary to expectations, the Sun is actually brighter during the sunspot

Sunspot

Sunspots are temporary phenomena on the photosphere of the Sun that appear visibly as dark spots compared to surrounding regions. They are caused by intense magnetic activity, which inhibits convection by an effect comparable to the eddy current brake, forming areas of reduced surface temperature....

cycle maximum (when the greatest number of dark 'sunspots' appear). This is because sunspots are surrounded by bright features called faculae, which more than cancel the darkening effect of the sunspot.

The major scientific findings from SMM are presented in several review articles in a Monograph.

The Solar Maximum Mission satellite during 1987-1989 discovered 10 sungrazing comet

Sungrazing comet

A sungrazing comet is a comet that passes extremely close to the Sun at perihelion – sometimes within a few thousand kilometres of the Sun's surface. While small sungrazers can be completely evaporated during such a close approach to the Sun, larger sungrazers can survive many perihelion passages...

External links

HEASARC, SMM
JPL, SMM
Marshall Space Flight Center, SMM
SMM C/P Coronal Mass Ejections
Sun|trek website An educational resource for teachers and students about the Sun and its effect on the Earth
Total Solar Irradiance ACRIM

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Instruments

See also

External links