Technology Highlights
Sun
Jul 19, 2022
Endurance carried a new type of space plasma analyzer with extremely fine energy resolution to make the first measurements of Earth’s electrical potential. This technology could also enable new tools to measure plasmas in the laboratory and in industrial applications.
Sun
Jan 18, 2022
NASA has developed a new type of instrument that can provide key information to predict and understand solar flares.
Sun
Jul 6, 2021
A NASA-sponsored team is rediscovering and improving lost techniques to develop high-fidelity instruments needed to make the magnetic field measurements that enable many of the nation’s space science and space weather missions.
Sun
Apr 20, 2021
NASA’s Science Mission Directorate Program Management Council met on June 28, 2022, to evaluate whether the Solar Cruiser project was ready to proceed to the building phase – known as Phase C -- of its life cycle. It was determined that the project had not demonstrated an ability to meet its launch... Read More
Sun
Apr 27, 2020
New technology demonstrated on BITSE has simultaneously detected the 2D density, temperature, and speed of electrons in the solar corona for the first time.
Sun
Jan 28, 2020
The balloon-borne PMC Turbo experiment successfully provided information about small-scale instabilities and turbulence in the mesosphere that will ultimately contribute to improving weather and climate models.
Sun, Earth’s Space Environment
Jan 6, 2020
X-rays from the Sun help us probe the highest-energy phenomena that occur in our solar system, including solar storms and their origins. The Sun presents some unique challenges to researchers attempting to unravel its high-energy behavior. To deal with these challenges, a sounding rocket experiment... Read More
Sun, Earth’s Space Environment
Dec 2, 2019
This blog post originated in the 2018 Science Mission Directorate Science and Technology Report.
PROJECT
The Microwave Electrojet Magnetogram (MEM)
KEY POINTS
The low SWaP MEM sensor enables cost-effective implementation of future high-impact ionospheric current investigations on resource-... Read More
Sun
Sep 9, 2019
This blog post originated in the 2018 Science Mission Directorate Science and Technology Report.
Sun
Apr 16, 2019
Earth’s ionosphere is increasingly recognized as a region of space that directly impacts the development and use of space assets for modern society. Monitoring the state of the ionosphere requires space-based instrumentation and preferably a fleet of spacecraft with identical instrumentation.
Sun
Jun 18, 2018
A team led by University of Colorado researchers has successfully developed the first science CubeSat mission for NASA’s Heliophysics Division. The Miniature X-ray Solar Spectrometer-1 (MinXSS-1) is a 3-Unit CubeSat measuring the energy distribution of soft X-rays from the sun.
Sun, Earth’s Space Environment
Feb 20, 2018
Global wind and temperature measurements in the lower thermosphere (100-150 km above Earth) are the two most important variables needed to accurately predict space weather and climate change. An innovative technique is being developed jointly by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics... Read More
Sun
Nov 9, 2016
Technology Development: Remote sensing of magnetic fields requires both precision spectroscopy and precision polarimetry (spectro-polarimetry). NASA led an international team that developed the Chromospheric Lyman-Alpha Spectropolarimeter (CLASP)—the first instrument to achieve the spectro-... Read More