[Voice off Screen] NASA is celebrating the tenth anniversary of the STEREO mission
STEREO are twin satellites and they look at the sun
and it's returned a lot of really important information about the sun and here to tell us
more about this mission is Dr. Georgia del
at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, thanks for joining us. [Georgia] Thanks for having me
[Voice off Screen] So start by telling us, what is space weather and why does it matter
to us on Earth? [Georgia] So that's a great question, we're very
familiar with the weather we have on the Earth obviously and we do want to
actually be able to predict it and watch the patterns and the same thing
is true for space weather, space weather is largely produced by the Sun it
has storms so it has solar flares and coronal mass ejections.
and these reach the Earth and sometimes they can be manifested in really beautiful ways
like the aurora we see in the northern and southern hemispheres
but other times it's a little bit more of a concern. It can disrupt communications
and navigation systems, it can bring down power systems
and it causes radiation to our astronauts that are traveling
so we really want to be able to have some predictive capabilities so that we can safeguard
against space weather. [Voice off Screen] Now let's talk a little bit about STEREO
how has it changed our understanding of the sun?
[Georgia] So that's a great question, STEREO is two missions
and it actually moves- one of the spacecraft moves
STEREO-B moves ahead of the Earth and the other moves behind the Earth
and as it progresses in it's trajectory we're able to see and map
out the entire sun in 360 degrees for the first time.
So this is really exciting because we can see an event on the backside of the sun
and watch it as it progresses to the front side of the sun where we're used
to looking at it and helping us to predict more weather- space weather. The other
thing is that we have two spacecrafts so it's as if you have two eyes
on the sun, and you can see the objects in three dimensions
and that has been transformative in terms of how we've learned how the sun
works. [Voice off Screen] Now we're gearing up for the solar event
of the century in the U.S., the august 2017 solar eclipse
How does an eclipse like this help us understand the sun?
So I just want to start out by saying if you have an opportunity to
see it, you should, it's a very breathtaking event.
But you know, the other things is that it is going to be the path of
totality will be going across the entire country from Oregon all the way to
the Carolinas. So many people will have an opportunitty to see it.
Scientifically speaking for us at NASA because the moon acts as
an occulter, it blocks out the sun, almost all of the light
So what you're left with is the corona, it's the atmosphere
of the sun and we can really study what's going on in the atmosphere
of the sun, we do have those kinds of instruments called "corona graphs"
in space and on the ground that studies the sun, but the moon is just
the right size so we can look very deep down in the atmosphere for the first time.
the other thing is that we can test our instrumentation
both the ground based instruments and those instruments that we'd like to fly on future missions
So i really hope that all of us will try to get involved in this next
2017 solar eclipse. [Voice off Screen] Speaking of future missions. NASA
has an upcoming mission that will for the first time touch the sun which is
just incredible, tell us more about this mission. [Georgia] So this is so
solar pro plus, and it will be launched in 2018, and
it's really exciting because right for the solar eclipse we were able to actually
see the atmosphere. Now we're going to send a spacecraft right in
to the atmosphere, we'll be four million miles right next to the surface
of the sun. 25 times closer than we are to the Earth
and we'll be able to see these eruptions right up close for the first time
and that's really very exciting.So we'll be able to actually tell
how these eruptions propagate from the Sun to the Earth
and that again will help us to understand and have better predicative capabilities
for space weather. [Voice off Screen] Now we heard that
STEREO-B was giving NASA the silent treatment for a while. Can you
tell us what happened? [Georgia] So STEREO-A and STEREO-B were
progressing towards the backside of the sun, and we knew that it would be very
difficult to communicate with it when it was behind the sun, so we were preparing these
spacecraft for that maneuver and unfortunately during the preparation
STEREO-B had an anomaly, it began to spin, and we lost
the pointing of the antenna to the Earth so we communication.
But what's remarkable is that 22 months later
we actually heard something from STEREO-B, that was only a few months ago
and we tried to stabilize the spacecraft but we weren't able to
but we are still trying to recover STEREO-B, and it's important to know that
STEREO-B had 8 years of great data, and
STEREO-A is continuing to give us good coverage and in fact it's- we- between
STEREO-A and spacecraft at Earth, we can see a great part of the sun
[Voice off Screen] And where can we learn more
about this mission and some of NASA's other heliophysics missions?
So NASA has a lot of information on the website
nasa.gov, and you can find out more about STEREO with
backslash stereo @nasa.gov and i'm also going to recommend you
go to our Twitter handle which is @NASASunEarth
There's a lot of information that you can find out about all the missions we're doing at NASA
[Voice off Screen] Great, thanks so much for joining us. [Georgia] Thanks for having me.