Sounding rocket that will capture 1500 images of the Sun launching today, announces NASA!

New Delhi: NASA is scheduled to launch a sounding rocket today, designed to capture 1500 images of the Sun within five minutes from a distance of 320 km above the Earth.

Called the Rapid Acquisition Imaging Spectrograph Experiment (RAISE) mission, the project will be thoroughly analyzing split-second changes occurring near the Sun's active regions – areas of intense, complex magnetic activity that can give rise to solar flares, which eject energy and solar material out into space.

At present, the Sun is being closely monitored by numerous other missions, including NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO). However, certain areas of the Sun demand especially high-cadence observations in order to understand the rapid changes occurring there.

"Dynamic processes happen on all timescales," said Don Hassler, principal investigator for the RAISE mission at the Southwest Research Institute in the US.

"With RAISE, we'll read out an image every two-tenths of a second, so we can study very fast processes and changes on the Sun. That's around five to 10 times faster than comparable instruments on other sounding rocket or satellite missions," said Hassler.

RAISE images are used to create a data product called a spectrogram, which separates light from the Sun into all its different wavelength components.

By looking at the intensity of light at each wavelength, scientists can assess how solar material and energy moves around the Sun, and how that movement evolves into massive solar eruptions.

"RAISE is pushing the limits of high-cadence observations, and doing so is challenging. But that's exactly what the NASA sounding rocket programme is for," Hassler said.

Sounding rockets have short-lived flights, with most of them having a life-span of 15-20 minutes, out of which, just five to six of those minutes are spent making observations from above the atmosphere, observations that can only be done in space.

These rockets also have a parabolic trajectory in the shape of a frown.

In RAISE's case, the extreme ultraviolet light the instruments observe can not penetrate Earth's atmosphere. After the flight, the payload parachutes to the ground, where it can be recovered for use again.

This will be the RAISE mission's third flight, and the scientists have continuously updated its technology.

For the upcoming flight, they have refurbished the detectors and updated the flight software, and the payload carries a new diffraction grating, which reflects light and separates it into its separate wavelengths.

The launch window for RAISE opens at 2:25 pm EDT (11:55 pm IST) in New Mexico. The precise timing of the launch depends on weather conditions, and coordinated timing with other space observatories such as NASA's SDO and IRIS.

(With PTI inputs)