Latest STEREO Stories

When it was launched 17 years ago, scientists and mission engineers for the Ulysses project knew they should expect, well, the unexpected. After all, the joint NASA/European Space Agency-managed spacecraft was going where no spacecraft had gone before - above and below the sun's poles. But the surprises the team expected were wholly in the area of solar research - which would make sense, as the primary mission of the Ulysses spacecraft is to characterize the sun and its influence on the space...

NASA's STEREO satellite captured the first images ever of a collision between a solar "hurricane", called a coronal mass ejection (CME), and a comet. The collision caused the complete detachment of the comet's plasma tail. Comets are icy leftovers from the solar system's formation billions of years ago. They usually hang out in the cold, distant regions of the solar system, but occasionally a gravitational tug from a planet, another comet, or even a nearby star sends them into the...

NASA's twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft have made the first three-dimensional images of the sun. The new view will greatly aid scientists' ability to understand solar physics and thereby improve space weather forecasting. "The improvement with STEREO's 3-D view is like going from a regular X-ray to a 3-D CAT scan in the medical field," said Michael Kaiser, the mission's project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The...

For the first time, an international team of astronomers have a side-on view as giant clouds of solar material leave the Sun and slam into the magnetic field of the Earth. On Tuesday 17 and Wednesday 18 April at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting in Preston, Professor Richard Harrison and Dr Chris Davis of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory will present spectacular images and movies of these dramatic events taken by UK cameras mounted on the two STEREO spacecraft.The two spacecraft that make...

NASA's STEREO-B spacecraft was about a million miles from Earth last month when it photographed the Moon passing in front of the sun. The resulting movie looks like it came from an alien solar system. NASA -- When scientists announce they're about to calibrate their instruments, science writers normally put away their pens. It's hard to write a good story about calibration. This may be the exception:On Feb. 25, 2007, NASA scientists were calibrating some cameras aboard the STEREO-B spacecraft...

NASA's twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatories (STEREO) sent back their first images of the sun this week and with them a view into the sun's mounting activity.One image shows the first coronal mass ejection (CME) observed by STEREO's Ahead spacecraft, taken Dec. 9. The other two images show the sun's super-hot atmosphere. They were taken on Dec. 4, the first day of imaging observations for the Ahead spacecraft. The false color images show a number of bright magnetic active regions,...

European experts have played an integral role in developing and building the instruments on NASA's STEREO spacecraft. This exciting new solar mission will allow scientists to build on the work of the ESA/NASA SOlar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) mission. The STEREO mission consists of a pair of spacecraft that will separate after launch and move apart. This will allow them to look at the Sun simultaneously from different angles.STEREO's mission is focused on the study of extraordinary...

"We have one solar maximum left to learn what we need to know before we send humans back to the Moon." "“-Prof. Robert Lin, Chairman of the Solar Sentinels Working Group, SPD, June 2006 NASA - In his 1970s book, Space, James Michener depicted a fictional Apollo mission that lost its crew to radiation from a massive solar flare. He based his tale on what easily might have been but for lucky timing: a massive flare on Aug. 7, 1972 occurred between Apollo 16 (April) and Apollo 17...

NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory mission will dramatically improve understanding of the powerful solar eruptions that can send more than a billion tons of the sun's outer atmosphere hurtling into space. The STEREO mission comprises two nearly identical spacecraft the size of golf carts, which are scheduled to launch on Aug. 31 aboard a Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. Their observations will enable scientists to construct the first-ever...

New funding, to extend the mission of ESA's venerable solar watchdog SOHO, will ensure it plays a leading part in the fleet of solar spacecraft scheduled to be launched over the next few years.Since its launch on 2 December 1995, The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has provided an unprecedented view of the Sun -- and not just the side facing the Earth. Two teams have now developed techniques for using SOHO to recreate the conditions on the far side of the Sun. The new funding...