SOLAR was an

ESA The European Space Agency (ESA) is a 23-member international organization devoted to space exploration. With its headquarters in Paris and a staff of around 2,547 people globally as of 2023, ESA was founded in 1975 in the context of European ...

science observatory on the Columbus Laboratory, which is part of the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is a large space station that was Assembly of the International Space Station, assembled and is maintained in low Earth orbit by a collaboration of five space agencies and their contractors: NASA (United ...

. SOLAR was launched with Columbus in February 2008 aboard

STS-122 STS-122 was a NASA Space Shuttle mission to the International Space Station (ISS), flown by the . STS-122 marked the 24th shuttle mission to the ISS, and the 121st Space Shuttle flight overall. The mission was also referred to as ISS-1E by the I ...

. It was externally mounted to Columbus with the European Technology Exposure Facility (EuTEF). SOLAR has three main space science instruments: SOVIM
SOLSPEC
and SOL-ACES. Together they provide detailed measurements of the

Sun The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...

spectral irradiance In radiometry, irradiance is the radiant flux ''received'' by a ''surface'' per unit area. The SI unit of irradiance is the watt per square metre (symbol W⋅m−2 or W/m2). The CGS unit erg per square centimetre per second (erg⋅cm−2⋅s−1) ...

. The SOLAR platform and its instruments are controlled from th
Belgian User Support and Operations Centre
(B.USOC), located at th
Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy
(BISA) in

Uccle Uccle (French language, French, ) or Ukkel (Dutch language, Dutch, ) is one of the List of municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region, 19 municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium. Located in the southern part of the region, it ...

Belgium Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...

Instruments

*SOVIM (''So''lar ''V''ariability and ''I''rradiance ''M''onitor) instrument is based on an earlier instrument (SOVA) which flew aboard the European Retrievable Carrier, launched on

STS-46 STS-46 was a NASA Space Shuttle mission using and was launched on July 31, 1992, and landed on August 8, 1992. Crew Crew seat assignments Mission highlights Gallery File:Sts046-99-039 - cropped.jpg, EURECA after deployment File ...

in 1992. It is designed to measure

solar radiation Sunlight is the portion of the electromagnetic radiation which is emitted by the Sun (i.e. solar radiation) and received by the Earth, in particular the visible light perceptible to the human eye as well as invisible infrared (typically p ...

with wavelengths from 200 nanometers - 100 micrometers. This covers near-

ultraviolet Ultraviolet radiation, also known as simply UV, is electromagnetic radiation of wavelengths of 10–400 nanometers, shorter than that of visible light, but longer than X-rays. UV radiation is present in sunlight and constitutes about 10% of ...

, visible and

infrared Infrared (IR; sometimes called infrared light) is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than that of visible light but shorter than microwaves. The infrared spectral band begins with the waves that are just longer than those ...

areas of the spectrum.
SOLSPEC
(''Sol''ar ''Spec''tral irradiance measurements) is designed to measure the solar spectral irradiance in the 165- to 3000-nanometer range with high spectral resolution. *SOL-ACES (''A''uto-''c''alibrating ''E''xtreme Ultraviolet and Ultraviolet spectrometer''s'') consists of four grazing incidence grating

spectrometer A spectrometer () is a scientific instrument used to separate and measure Spectrum, spectral components of a physical phenomenon. Spectrometer is a broad term often used to describe instruments that measure a continuous variable of a phenomeno ...

s. They are designed to measure the EUV/UV spectral regime (17 nanometers - 220 nanometers) with moderate spectral resolution.

Mission

The mission was originally planned for a 2003 launch, but was delayed following the

Space Shuttle Columbia disaster On Saturday, February 1, 2003, Space Shuttle Columbia, Space Shuttle ''Columbia'' disintegrated as it Atmospheric entry, re-entered the atmosphere over Texas and Louisiana, killing all seven astronauts on board. It was the second List of Spa ...

. Some other components are also planned to be mounted externally on Columbus on future missions, including the Atomic Clock Ensemble in Space (ACES). Another name for SOLAR may be Solar Monitoring Observatory or SMO. In 2012, the entire 450-tonne station was rotated so SOLAR could observe a full rotation of the Sun continuously. A Solar rotation takes about 24–28 days depending on the latitude. SOLAR's mission ended in 2017 with the failure of all but one of its instruments. On the morning of January 28, 2020 SOLAR was removed from FRAM 1 where it rested since it was delivered on STS 122 and strapped to the side of

Cygnus NG-12 NG-12, previously known as OA-12, was the thirteenth flight of the Northrop Grumman robotic resupply spacecraft Cygnus (spacecraft), Cygnus and its twelfth Commercial Resupply Services flight to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA. T ...

with the SDS placed on the other side. SOLAR was released from the station on February 3, 2020 and burnt up in the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean on March 13, 2020 ending the mission which spent a decade photographing the sun.

Visuals

References

External links

SOLAR at eoPortal
(includes photo gallery) {{ESA projects Science facilities on the International Space Station Columbus (ISS module) Missions to the Sun Crewed space observatories Solar observatories Ultraviolet telescopes

Instruments

Mission

Visuals

See also

References

External links