SunRISE Beauty Pass

Released Tuesday, December 8, 2020

ID: 20338

- Visualizations by:
- Adriana Manrique Gutierrez
- and Krystofer Kim
- Produced by:
- Joy Ng

A coronal mass ejection (CME) erupts from the Sun and sends Type II radio bursts ahead of it. SunRISE measures the radio bursts and transmits the data to NASA’s Deep Space Network. Type II radio bursts are the earliest indicators of shocks from a solar eruption and can provide information on solar energetic particle (SEP) events.

The mission called the Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment, or SunRISE, is an array of six CubeSats operating as one very large radio telescope. The mission design relies on six solar-powered CubeSats – each about the size of a toaster oven – to simultaneously observe radio images of low-frequency emission from solar activity and transmit data to NASA’s Deep Space Network. The constellation of CubeSats would fly within 6 miles of each other, above Earth's atmosphere, which otherwise blocks the radio signals SunRISE will observe. Together, the six CubeSats will create 3D maps to pinpoint where giant particle bursts originate on the Sun and how they evolve as they expand outward into space. This, in turn, will help determine what initiates and accelerates these giant jets of radiation. The six individual spacecraft will also work together to map, for the first time, the pattern of magnetic field lines reaching from the Sun out into interplanetary space. SunRISE is scheduled to launch no earlier than July 2023.