Summer-loving NASA engineers launch SDO probe to worship the sun (video)

Say all you want about how bad your local forecast is, it's way more accurate than our local solar forecast. The last time we checked, solar storms are said to knock out GPS temporarily sometime in the next two years -- the kind of window that would make even the most suave meteorologist smirk. With the launch of the new Solar Dynamics Observatory we're hoping NASA can shrink that window down by, oh, at least a few months. The probe lifted off yesterday, perched atop an Atlas V rocket, and is now orbiting Earth. There it will study our sun with a series of optical and magnetic sensors, beaming data back at a rate of 150MBit/sec, making us ever so slightly jealous that this thing can get a better signal in space than we can down here on the surface. The launch fireworks are embedded below for those who weren't glued to NASA TV yesterday morning.

[Thanks, Pavel]

[The MAZZTer Posted Feb 12th 2010 9:06AM]

150MBit/s alone does not indicate a good internet connection. :) This is why satellite internet tends to suck, since the LATENCY is worse than dial up. It can take 0.5 seconds for a signal to get to the satellite and back at the speed of light, they're pretty high up there. :) For gaming that delay is disastrous, doesn't matter how much bandwidth you have.

[Neotyguy40 Posted Feb 12th 2010 2:30PM]

@The MAZZTer

Umm... Yea, if the satellite was half-way to the moon...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jymDn0W6U

Watch that and pay close attention to the artificial satellite distances...

I would say light travels to and from satellites at about... 0.01 seconds... Fast enough for games...

[Woovie Posted Feb 12th 2010 7:28PM]

@Neotyguy40 I have a friend who lives in Texas, the same state as me, but he has satellite internet. He pings me at 1100ms cause of his satellite internet. A normal ping from his location would be close to 40ms if he had ground connection.

[nickodvz Posted Feb 12th 2010 9:11AM]

why the heck does this probe have par cans on it (AIA)? and a projector (HMI)?
inb4 downrank 'cause you think I think there's actually a par cans and a projector on it

[Luffy Posted Feb 12th 2010 10:01AM]

@nickodvz NASA's secret goal is for a Galactic Rave.

[mattscinto Posted Feb 12th 2010 9:44AM]

If they narrow the window of solar flares to December of 2012... well... I'm scurred.

[Sporkupine Posted Feb 12th 2010 10:08AM]

There's a cool video of the SDO rocket breaking up a 'sundog' (rainbow caused by ice crystals) here: http://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=12&month=02&year=2010

[SOOPERGOOMAN Posted Feb 12th 2010 10:23AM]

Hopefully now NASA will be able to aptly warn us of the impending doom that is the massive solar storm that is to hit sometime later this year (see July) that is to wipe out all tech worldwide. Lets just hope they decide to warn us before it happens and not after like they do with the thousands of objects that miss us daily. Heck just Tuesday alone we were missed by 1094 different objects. Kudos for geekiness.

[paul34 Posted Feb 12th 2010 10:35AM]

@SOOPERGOOMAN

Humanity managed to survive for a several thousands of years before NASA... I think we'll be fine again.

[xxxsam Posted Feb 12th 2010 7:19PM]

@paul34 It's just a russian roulette thing - sooner or later, something big will hit. Might be another ten thousand years, or more, or next year...

the good news is, even if Nasa do spot it in time, we can still do nothing whatever about it at present. :)

[jmason86 Posted Feb 12th 2010 2:13PM]

I'm a research assistant at Stanford who's been working on the development of the pipeline to process the data from HMI. The guy who hired me, Phil Scherrer, is the PI on HMI. It's super exciting. I can't wait to get my hands on the new data.
The focus of my senior thesis at UC Santa Cruz was predicting solar flares and coronal mass ejections. I showed that the existing data could not be used to reliably predict these things. We need vector magnetic data in a consistent and periodic dataset. That's what HMI will do for us.
I'm waiting to hear back from grad school admissions right now... I've already got an idea in mind for a PhD thesis that could significantly improve our forecasting abilities :) Here's hoping