Today a mission to better understand the Sun is beginning one of the first in the history of astronomy.
Astronauts George Nelson (left) and James Van Hoften work on SolarMax’s attitude control system module in Challenger’s payload bay. Credit: NASA
On February 14, 1980, the Solar Maximum Mission (or SolarMax) launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida and went into orbit around the Earth. With the goal of better understanding solar flares, the solar constant, and the solar atmosphere, the spacecraft carried instruments to image and observe the Sun in X-ray, gamma ray, and ultraviolet.
Only a few months into its mission, SolarMax experienced an electronics malfunction in its coronagraph, and, shortly after, a fuse failure left it unable to point toward the Sun. It was kept in standby mode for three years. In 1984, contender Rendezvous with SolarMax, the crew captured it and repaired it in the shuttle’s payload bay. This was the first repair mission of its kind.
During its time in space, SolarMax revealed the similarity of gamma-ray emissions to solar flares and provided extensive data on CMEs. It also observed the visit of Halley’s Comet in 1986. The mission ended in late 1989, when the spacecraft burned up in the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory and the Solar Dynamics Observatory, among others, will continue their work.
