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Solar energy tracker powers down after 17 years
After nearly two decades, the Sun has set for NASA's SOlar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE), a mission that continued and advanced the agency's 40-year record of measuring solar irradiance and studying its influence on Earth's climate.
After nearly two decades, the Sun has set for NASA's SOlar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE), a mission that continued and advanced the agency's 40-year record of measuring solar irradiance and studying its influence on Earth's climate.
The SORCE team turned off the spacecraft on February 25, 2020, concluding 17 years of measuring the amount, spectrum and fluctuations of solar energy entering Earth's atmosphere—vital information for understanding climate and the planet's energy balance. The mission's legacy is continued by the Total and Spectral solar Irradiance Sensor (TSIS-1), launched to the International Space Station in December 2017, and TSIS-2, which will launch aboard its own spacecraft in 2023.
As SORCE's time in the Sun ends, NASA's solar irradiance record continues with TSIS-1. The mission's two instruments measure TSI and SSI with even more advanced instruments that build on SORCE's legacy, said Wu. They have already enabled advances like establishing a new reference for the "quiet" Sun when there were no sunspots in 2019, and for comparing this to SORCE observations of the previous solar cycle minimum in 2008.
TSIS-2 is scheduled to launch in 2023 with identical instruments to TSIS-1. Its vantage point aboard its own spacecraft will give it more flexibility than TSIS-1's data collection aboard the ISS.
"We are looking forward to continuing the groundbreaking science ushered in by SORCE, and to maintaining the solar irradiance data record through this decade and beyond with TSIS-1 and 2," said LASP's Peter Pilewskie, principal investigator for the TSIS missions. "SORCE set the standard for measurement accuracy and spectral coverage, two attributes of the mission that were key to gaining insight into the Sun's role in the climate system. TSIS has made additional improvements that should further enhance Sun-climate studies."
"Solar irradiance measurements are very challenging, and the SORCE team proposed a different way, a new technology, to measure them," said Wu. "Using advanced technology to advance our science capability, SORCE is a very good example of NASA's spirit."
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Link: https://phys.org/news/2020-03-solar-energy-tracker-powers-years.html
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