2009-07-10:

NASA mission with Notur involvement

On June 19 NASA announced that it had selected two proposed science missions under the Small Explorer (SMEX) programme, to be launched before 2015.

One of the two missions is the IRIS (Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph) mission, in which simulations carried out within NOTUR play a major part.

The IRIS mission will use a solar telescope and spectrograph to explore the solar chromosphere. This is a crucial region for understanding energy transport into the solar wind and an archetype for stellar atmospheres. Recent discoveries have shown the chromosphere is significantly more dynamic and structured than previously thought. The unique instrument capabilities, coupled with state of the art 3-D modeling, will explore this dynamic region in detail. The mission will greatly extend the scientific output of existing heliophysics spacecraft that follow the effects of energy release processes from the sun to Earth.

Mats Carlsson and Viggo Hansteen of the Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Oslo, are among only ten Co-Investigators from outside the USA, and have been invited to be Co-Investigators because of their expertise on 3-D numerical modeling of the solar atmosphere, and especially the chromosphere, something that is essential for the mission. All examples of 3-D modeling in the successful project proposal (a total of nine figures) had been carried out within the project "Solar Atmospheric Modelling" on NOTUR resources. IRIS will be launched in December 2012.

Links to external information (in Norwegian)

• UiO med på NASA-satellitt
• UiO-astronomer valgt ut til NASA-prosjekt