Last evening NASA officially launched a satellite bound for the sun on a mission to explore our nearest and most important star's mysterious regions and allow for better forecasts of space weather, Fox News reports.
Weather in space may at times disrupt communications systems on Earth, and being able to predict changes is of utmost importance to astronomers. The Iris satellite rode into Earth orbit on a Pegasus XL rocket dropped from an airplane yesterday. The plane, an Orbital Sciences L-1011 carrier aircraft, took off at around sunset from the Vandenberg Air Force Base, and released the rocket about 100 miles off of California's central coast at an altitude of 39,000 feet, igniting its engine for the 13-minute climb into space.
"This is a very difficult region to understand and observe. We haven't had the technical capabilities before now to really zoom in," NASA program scientist Jeffrey Newmark told Fox News before the launch.
The Iris satellite is 7 feet long and weighs 400 pounds, carrying an ultraviolet telescope that can take high-resolution images every several seconds. Previous sun-exploring spacecraft similar to the Iris have provided a plethora of information about the sun, sending back brilliant pictures of the star's solar flares.
Mission controllers applauded the news that the Iris satellite was ready to begin its two-year space mission as it unfurled its solar panels.
"We're thrilled," NASA launch director Tim Dunn said in a NASA TV interview.
Although communications signals were temporarily lost during the launch, it otherwise went smoothly and successfully, as ground controllers tracked down the Iris through other satellites orbiting the Earth.
The goal of this mission is to learn more about how regions of the sun drive solar winds, and for the Iris to explore the region that lies between the surface and corona of the sun, an area of the star that lacks sufficient data. Iris will take about a month to settle into space before engineers power it up to receive information and make its observations.
NASA engineers hope that Iris will be extremely valuable in providing information on our planet's closest star.
Click here to see a photo of NASA technicians and engineers at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California connecting the Pegasus XL rocket to the Orbital Sciences L-1011 carrier aircraft.
