Three NASA missions return data in first light

NASA's ongoing quest to explore our solar system and beyond has been spurred by new information this week, with three key missions proving not only that they are operational, but that their scientific potential is exceptional. On 17 September 2018, TESS, the satellite for the investigation of exoplanets in transit, presented its first scientific observations. Later in the week, the last two missions to join NASA's heliophysics fleet provided the first light data: Parker Solar Probe, humanity's first mission to "touch" the sun and GOLD , a mission that studies the dynamic boundary between the Earth and space.

Some of the data from TESS's initial scientific orbit include a detailed picture of the southern skies taken with the four wide-field planetary hunters. The image captures a multitude of stars and other objects, including systems known to have exoplanets, planets beyond our solar system. TESS will spend the next two years monitoring the brightest and closest stars for periodic dives of their luminosity, called transits. These transits suggest that a planet can pass in front of its parent star. TESS should find thousands of new planets using this method.

Together, the other two missions represent two essential points of observation in the giant space system – dominated by particles and the magnetic energy of the Sun – studied by the field of heliophysics. Parker Solar Probe will help us understand how the sun's atmosphere drives particles into space; GOLD monitors changes in the near – Earth space, most of them being driven by a constantly changing solar activity. Both viewpoints support the focus of heliophysics on our star and its influence on the very nature of space – and, in turn, on the atmosphere of planets and human technology.

At the beginning of September, each of the four Parker Solar Probe instrument suites is on and has transmitted its first observations on the spacecraft's path to the sun. Although the data are not yet examples of key scientific observations that the spacecraft will take closer to the Sun, they show that each of the instruments is working well.

The instruments work in tandem to measure the electric and magnetic fields of the Sun and the particles of the Sun and the solar wind. They also capture images of the solar wind environment around the spacecraft. The first approach to the Mission's Sun will take place in early November 2018, but even now, still outside of Venus' orbit, the instruments indicate that they are ready to collect measurements of what happens in the solar wind.

"All the instruments returned data that not only serve calibration, but also that we think they measure near the Sun to solve the mysteries of the solar atmosphere, the crown," says Nour Raouafi, scientist Parker Solar Probe project. Applied Physics Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University, Laurel, Maryland.

WISPR, the only embedded imager of the mission, captured the first shots of his trip to the Sun on September 9, 2018. Similarly, the FIELDS suite of instruments provided the first observations of magnetic fields and even captured a burst of radio waves burst. One of the SWEAP instruments sampled his first burst of solar wind and IS instrument? IS – pronounced "ee-sis" and including the symbol of the Sun in its acronym – has successfully measured the energetic particle environment.

The first light from GOLD closely followed Parker Solar Probe's. On September 11, the GOLD, a short-term instrument for world-wide record and disc observations, is turned on and opens its cover to digitize the Earth for the first time, returning a complete picture of the world. 39, western hemisphere ultraviolet. In this length of light wave invisible to the human eye, GOLD allows researchers to visualize temperature and composition on a global scale in the dynamic region where the upper Earth 's atmosphere meets the Earth' s. ;space.

The commissioning of GOLD began on September 4 and will continue until early October, while the team continues to prepare the instrument for its two-year scientific mission.

"The GOLD mission is changing the game, providing unparalleled images of the higher atmospheric conditions similar to the first Earth-based meteorological satellites," said Sarah Jones, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center GOLD mission scientist in Greenbelt, Maryland. "These global-scale images of the Earth-space boundary will allow scientists to begin unraveling the effects of the Sun compared to those from the lower Earth's climate."

With missions both near and far, like bookends in the vast space between the Sun and the Earth, researchers are eager to fill the gaps in our understanding of the complex relationship between solar activity and the conditions on Earth.

Historically difficult to observe, the studies of the GOLD region are little understood and can undergo dramatic changes in less than an hour. GOLD, which occupies a geostationary orbit and overflies 22,000 miles over the Western Hemisphere, will provide hour-by-hour updates on the changing conditions of near-Earth space, known as space weather. Changes in space weather can blur communication signals, disrupt electronics on satellites, endanger astronauts and, at worst, disrupt power grids.

Meanwhile, Parker Solar Probe will visit the flaming crown, closer to the sun than any other spacecraft before. The mission seeks to answer fundamental questions about the sun – questions that are at the base of understanding how solar activity shapes spatial weather across the solar system.

TESS is NASA's astrophysical exploration mission led and operated by MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and managed by Goddard. Dr. George Ricker of the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research at MIT is the principal investigator of the mission. Additional partners include Northrop Grumman, based in Falls Church, Virginia; NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley; the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Lincoln Laboratory of MIT in Lexington, Massachusetts; and the Science Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. More than a dozen universities, research institutes and observatories around the world participate in the mission.

Parker Solar Probe is part of NASA's Living with a Star program, which explores aspects of the Sun-Earth system that directly affect life and society. The LWS is managed by Goddard for the heliophysics division of the NASA Scientific Missions Directorate in Washington. Johns Hopkins APL manages the Parker Solar Probe mission for NASA. APL designed, built and operates the spacecraft.

GOLD is an opportunity mission of NASA as part of the heliophysical exploration program. Goddard manages the Explorer program for the heliophysics division of the NASA Science Missions Directorate in Washington. It is designed to provide frequent and inexpensive access to space using the principal scientific research conducted by the investigator in the field of astrophysics and heliophysics. GOLD is headed by the University of Central Florida. The Atmospheric and Space Physics Laboratory at the University of Colorado at Boulder built and operates the instrument. The GOLD instrument is hosted on a commercial communication satellite, SES-14, built by Airbus for the Luxembourg satellite operator SES.

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Image: First light data for NASA's Parker Solar Probe