Updated By: LatestGKGS Desk
NASA's FOXSI Mission to search Nanoflares in the Sun with X-ray vision
First Solar Imager to measure high-energy X-rays directly from the Sun
NASA’s Focusing Optics X-ray Solar Imager, or FOXSI – a sounding rocket mission – is soon set to stare directly at the Sun and search for nanoflares – miniature explosions invisible to the naked eye – using its X-ray vision.
The FOXSI mission will take its third flight form the White Sands Missile Range in White Sands, New Mexico, no earlier than September 7, according to the agency.
Derived from the nautical term “to sound”, meaning to measure, FOXSI rockets make brief 15- minute journey above the Earth’s atmosphere for a peek at space before falling back to the ground.
FOXSI will travel 190 miles up, above the shield of Earth’s atmosphere, to view the sun.
FOXSI is the first instrument built specially to image high-energy X-ray from the Sun by directly focusing them according to the space physicists at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and principal investigator for the mission.
Other instruments have done this for other astronomical objects but FOXSI is so far the only instrument to optimize especially for the Sun.
Nanoflares – small but intense eruption—are born when magnetic field lines in the Sun’s atmosphere tangle up and stretch until they break like a rubber band. The energy they release accelerates particles to near light speed and according to some scientists, heat the solar atmosphere to its searing million-degree Fahrenheit temperature.
