NASA’s Sounding rocket to take 1500 images of the Sun within five minutes

NASA is about to launch a rocket which is purposely designed to take 1500 images of the Sun within five minutes. The distance can be around 320 kilometers above the surface of Earth. The rocket being a part of Rapid Acquisition Imaging Spectrograph Experiment (RAISE)  is designed for scrutinizing the split-second changes which occur near the Sun and its active region. The rocket is supposed to be active in the regions having a complex magnetic activity which could rise and result to solar flares. These solar flares eject energy and other solar materials present in space. “Dynamic processes happen on all timescales,” said Don Hassler, principal investigator for the Raise mission at the Southwest Research Institute in the United States. “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 five to 10 times faster than comparable instruments on other sounding rocket or satellite missions,” said Hassler. The sounding rocket’s flight is expected to have activity time period of 15 to 20 minutes. According to a report from NASA, only five to six minutes would be used for making observations from above the atmosphere. Once the rocket completes its flight, it’s payload parachutes it back to the Earth’s surface or ground where it would be recovered and reused if everything goes as per the plan. A sounding rocket’s name is derived from “to sound”, a term which means “to measure”. This is also known as a research rocket as it is designed to take measurements and perform experiments during a sub-orbital flight. Its flight is short-lived and also has a parabolic trajectory. Sounding rockets convey logical instruments into space along with an explanatory direction. Their general time in space is very brief. The brief timeframe and low vehicle rates are more than satisfactory to do an effective logical analysis. Moreover, there are some critical districts of space that are too low for satellites and accordingly, sounding rockets give the main stages that can do estimations in these regions. Images from RAISE are used in the creation of a data product called a spectrogram, that separates light from the Sun into other wavelength components. If we look at the intensity of light present at each wavelength, scientists can easily assess how solar material and the energies present there revolves around the Sun, and how this movement evolves into 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 program is for,” Hassler said.