China’s ASO-S satellite lifts off for closer look at the sun’s eruptions
- The space telescope will orbit the Earth to monitor solar storms that are expected to reach a peak in 2025
- The probe is one of a number of new telescopes focusing in on the sun’s activity
From 720km (447 miles) above the Earth, ASO-S will be the first solar telescope to simultaneously monitor the two most violent activities on the sun – solar flares and coronal mass ejections – as well as the magnetic field that drives these eruptions.
The mission aims to understand the links between these phenomena, and how they trigger hazardous conditions in space that can knock out satellite services and power grids on Earth.
“I did not sleep well last night,” said the mission’s chief scientist, Gan Weiqun from the Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing.
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Gan said the 1 billion yuan (US$140 million) ASO-S, or Kuafu 1, took more than a decade and contributions from a thousand people to launch.
Until now, China’s solar researchers have been restricted to ground observatories, including a 35cm (14-inch) solar telescope in suburban Beijing and a 1 metre (3.3-feet) one in Yunnan. But those facilities can only reveal a partial picture of the sun because the Earth’s atmosphere absorbs some solar emissions.
China has had plans to build a solar probe since the 1970s, and when Gan and his team started working on Kuafu 1 in 2012, there were already more than 70 solar missions around the world.
“We had to do it and do it quickly. If we missed out the time window on the next solar cycle, the community would have to wait until after 2030,” he said.
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The sun’s storms are expected to peak in this solar cycle in 2025 and Kuafu 1 will join a fleet of sun-gazing telescopes, including Nasa’s Parker Solar Probe and the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter, already in orbit around the Earth or the sun.
Kuafu 1, named after a giant in Chinese mythology who chased the sun to stop it from scorching the Earth, will focus on intense bursts of light known as solar flares, and coronal mass ejections of charged particles called plasma. Both are believed to be caused by the sun’s turbulent magnetic field.
Solar flares can happen multiple times a day at the solar storm peak, with some flares as powerful as a billion hydrogen bombs.
Kuafu 1 has three major instruments on board – a magnetograph to study the sun’s magnetic field, an X-ray imager to detect high-energy radiation from solar flares, and a coronagraph to look at the sun’s outer atmosphere in the ultraviolet and visible light wavelengths.
The instruments are designed to work together to produce high-definition observations.
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Gan said the Kaufu 1 team was keen to switch on the instruments and start looking at the data, which will be released to the international community after six months, in line with standard international practice.
Gan said he hoped the government would continue to support solar missions, with more than 20 ideas in the pipeline.
One proposal is to “touch” the sun at five solar radius – about half the altitude of the Parker solar probe – by 2036 at the earliest.
“If ASO-S is where China begins in space-based solar exploration, our next mission will lead the world,” Gan said.
