2002 SPACE SCIENCE VIDEOTAPES |
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Tape Title | Record ID | Date Produced | TRT: |
Synopsis |
| NEW SATELLITE REVEALS UNEXPLORED REGION OF EARTH
| G02-022 | 5/28/02 | 00:07:18 | Thought we had explored all of Earth by now? You would be wrong until today when NASA's newest solar spacecraft releases its first images of one of Earth's least understood regions of our atmosphere. The Thermosphere Ionosphere Mesosphere Energetics and Dynamics (TIMED) mission has allowed scientists to track the activity from an April 2002 solar storm in Earth's 'Mesosphere, Lower Thermosphere /Ionosphere' (MLTI) region, about 40-110 miles (60-180 km) above the Earth. Also included are views of this solar activity as seen by other orbiting spacecraft like SOHO and TRACE.
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TAPE CONTENTS: |
| ITEM (1): TIMED For Tracking - Launched Dec. 7, 2001, TIMED is exploring an entirely unexplored part of our atmosphere: the MLTI. Located just at the edge of space, scientists hope TIMED will reveal how the MLTI affects and is changed by Earth's lower atmosphere and how it influences the space near Earth occupied by low-orbiting satellites.
The first sequence shows intense auroras, indicated in red, occurring over the northern (left) and southern (right) polar regions during solar storms in mid-April. Data from the GUVI instrument on TIMED is superimposed on Earth to show the location of the auroras. The second sequence is from the SABER instrument; it shows high levels of nitric oxide (red), which is a cooling agent used to track upper atmospheric wind patterns. SABER also allows scientists to study the effects of solar storms on the upper atmosphere's composition and temperature.
Courtesy: NASA / APL
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| ITEM (2): 'Closest Thing to Being There' - Solar flares are generated by the powerful blasts of magnetic energy on the Sun and are capable of hurling millions of tons of plasma toward Earth. This close-up view of the flare on April 21 is from NASA's Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) spacecraft. Classified as the most powerful type, an X-class flare, it is accompanied by coils of hot, electrified gas known as coronal loops. Typically appearing above sunspots, the loops are often more than 300,000 miles high and capable of spanning 30 Earths!
The sunspot group 9906 was very active in mid-April, producing a series of solar flares, or explosions, within about five days. The largest was an X-class 1.5 flare that sent a powerful coronal mass ejection (CME) hurling toward Earth on April 21. When it reached Earth a few days later, the expanding cloud from that CME resulted in a range of geomagnetic activity and auroras.
Courtesy: NASA / LMSAL
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| ITEM (3): Earth-Bound Shots of Plasma - These views came from two instruments on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft on April 21. The first shows a full-disk image of the Sun from the Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) showing the 'explosion' on the Sun of the X-class flare. The latter image is from the Large Angle Spectrometric Coronograph (LASCO) instrument on SOHO which mimics an eclipse to study the Sun's corona, that wispy white atmosphere of the Sun.
Courtesy: NASA/ESA
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| ITEM (4): Where is The MLTI? - TIMED is studying the unexplored MLTI region at the edge of space where air pressure is a thousand to a trillion times less than at sea level. Home to electric currents that produce the aurora, the MLTI is very turbulent and variable enough to possibly serve as early warning signs of global climate change. This region has been difficult to study because it is too high for airplanes or balloons and too low for most satellites to sample directly. TIMED orbit is just above the MLTI and works with a network of ground-based observation sites.
Courtesy: NASA/APL
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| ITEM (5): TIMED For Action - The TIMED spacecraft weighs 1,294 lbs (587 kg) and measures 38.5 feet wide in orbit with its solar array deployed. Its mission will lead it to an orbit of 388 miles above the Earth; that's about 50 miles higher than communications satellites and slightly higher than the space shuttle. It carries four instruments and is a joint mission of NASA and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md.
Courtesy: NASA/APL
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