Feb 9, 2010, 21:10 GMT
Washington - NASA planned to launch a solar probe on Wednesday to help unlock more secrets about the sun, whose massive storms affect Earth's weather and can pose danger to Earth dwellers.
The Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO) is the 'crown jewel' of a fleet of NASA satellites planned to collect more details about what's going on underneath and above the surface of the sun, said Michael Luther, a NASA official who is overseeing the programme, in a webcast briefing.
Under the Living With a Star programme, scientists said they hope to better predict the sun's periodic release of billions of tons of matter that can endanger human life and health, corrode oil pipelines, disrupt communications and cause power surges.
After an earlier launch was delayed due to bad weather, a NASA meteorologist said high winds could also threaten Wednesday's launch.
From Earth's orbit, the SDO will collect data over five years and download 1.5 terabytes every day - the equivalent of 500,000 songs onto an iPod, said Elizabeth Citrin, project manager.
A special receiving centre on Earth will manage the data. For iPhone owners, there will be a special app to see the current-time behaviour of the sun as interpreted from the data flow.
'This is way cool,' said Madhulika Guhathakurta, lead programme scientist for Living With a Star, holding up an iPhone.
While various elements of the sun have been studied over the years, the SDO will be the first to present a 'comprehensive view' of all the elements, she said.
The solar probe will collect 60 images a minute with 10 times the resolution of high-definition television, 24 hours a day, measuring the sun's extreme ultraviolet light and mapping its plasma flows and magnetic fields.
'This is the whole picture,' Guhathakurta said. It will show 'what happens on the sun and what happens to us here.'
Dean Pesnell, another project scientist, said the project is vital to figuring out how to predict solar disruptions.
'Our sun affects our lives as we depend more and more on technology,' he said. 'Every time we look at the magnetic field of the sun, it's different.'
The scientists noted the Halloween solar disruptions of 2003, which knocked out GPS systems across the US. In that case, the sun's magnetic field stretched and snapped back like a rubber band, sending billions of tons of gas and particles at 8 kilometres an hour earthwards.
In 1989, a similar storm shut down Quebec's power grid.
'The sun's magnetic fields are the equivalent of tectonic plates on Earth,' said Alan Title, another astronomer on the project. When they shift, they are 'capable of releasing massive amounts of energy.'
Under the normal 11-year cycle of solar disruptions, also known as sunspots, the SDO's mission will coincide with the next storms in 2013 or 2014.
At times in history, however, the sun has skipped its sunspot cycle, scientists say. During one such period, called the Maunder Minimum, from 1645 to 1715, observers also recorded winters that were unusually and bitterly cold. But the link between the sun's dormancy and the so-called 'little ice age' has never been proven.
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