MISSION SOHO

September 10, 2020

MISSION SOHO

SOHO has been one of the most remarkable missions in the history of mankind. From researches about the Sun's interior to the breathtaking views of the Sun, it has served us a lot with help of an interconnected Deep space Network with recievers across the globe.

This Blog will acquaint you with the SOHO mission, its aims and what we have grasped from it!

SOHO stands for Solar Heliospheric Observatory, and it is a project between NASA and ESA to study the dynamics of Sun.

Together with the ESA's cluster mission, SOHO is studying the Sun-Earth interaction from various perpectives for more precise information.

This mission costed over a Thousand Million Euros, and the expenditure was shared among the ESA member states and NASA. SOHO was launched by NASA on an Atlas II-AS rocket (AC-121) from the Cape Canaveral Air Station (located in Florida,US) on 2 December 1995. It is basically operated by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre, where a team of NASA

SOHO basically orbits around sun at a distance of 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, around the First Lagrangian Point, towards the Sun. This os the point where the Sun's and Earth's gravitational forces balance out and the spacecraft is experiences the forces of both the bodies.

The main objectives of SOHO in its short 2-year mission lifetime (later the mission lifetime had been extended due to its spectacular discoveries ) were

1. To understand the structure and dynamics of Solar Interior

2. To understand the reason of existence of the corona, and how is it heated to an enormous temperature of 1 000 000 degrees Celsius, although it appears to be dim!

3. Where is Solar wind produced and how is it accelerated

This 1850 kilograms guy has provided us with some of the most impeccable discoveries and most stunning views of our star, which our man kind had never seen!

What makes SOHO interesting is that it works without gyroscopes, which are devices that basically help the spacecraft to pinpoint and observe any object at any coordinates

But it still works without those guys, thanks to the software developed by programmers at NASA and ESA, which doesn't relies on therefore widening the scope of future designs of spacecraft.

Currently, our SOHO works with the following equipments on board

1. Coronal Diagnostic Spectrometer (CDS)

Its main work is to detect emission lines from ions present in the Corona of Sun, which provides us the detailed information about the Sun' Atmosphere, especially about plasma in the extreme temperature range fron 10,000- 1 million degrees celsius!

Now's that's really hot!

2. Charge,Element, and Isotope Analysis System (CELIAS)

This equipment continuously researches upon the solar winds, excited ions of solar,interplanetary and ever interstellar origin, which cross the spacecraft.

What it basically does is that it analyses the density, constituents, their nature,size present in solar system and even warns us about solar storms that could damage satellites in the Earth's orbit

3. Comprehensive Suprathermal and Energetic ParticleAnalyzer (COSTEP)

This guy detects and classifies very energetic paritlces of solar, interplanetary and even galactic origin.

4. Exreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope ( EIT)

This telescope is responsible for providing us with disc images of the Sun, at only 4 selected colors in extreme ultraviolet, plasma and low corona region.

5. Energetic and Relativistic Nuclei abd Electron Experiment (ERNE)

This measures the energies and desnities of highe energy particles originating from Sun and Milky Way Galaxy and studies particles classified by COSTEP

6. GOLF (Global Oscillations at Low Frequency )

This equipment studies the internal structure of Sun by measuring velocity oscillations over entire solar disc

Apart from the above equipments, SOHO is equipped with variety of other equipments like LASCO,MDI,SUMER, which help it to "see" Sun without any difficulty and know about the dynamics of the interior of Sun by studying the surface of Sun.

An interesting part is that the it researches about the Sun's interior is by the velocity oscillations /Solar-quakes or sun-quakes.

This tells SOHO a lot about the interior of Sun with help of the equipments mentioned above.

Till date SOHO gives us information about the Solar stuff and is also discovering comets - thanks to its equipment LASCO.

On June 15 this year, it spotted the 4000th comet which had never been seen by mankind

SOHO continues to serve us and send us data, thanks to NASA 's DSN across the Globe.

SOHO's contribution to the mankind will remain immortal, and it will continue to spread the knowledge about Sun and would surely make more discoveries in near future!