Sunrise III successfully launched

This mission has a strong participation of the Solar Physics Group of the IAA.
10/07/2024

After four attempts and more than a month of waiting, the Sunrise III mission has been successfully launched.

It has a strong participation of the Solar Physics Group of the IAA, which leads one of the three postfocus instruments (TuMag) and co-leads another (SCIP). 

 

 

About SUNRISE

The first SUNRISE telescope was launched in 2008. As it proved to be a success, SUNRISE II was launched in 2013 and SUNRISE III has just been launched, after a failed attempt in 2022.

The project is being developed in a framework of international cooperation led by Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung (MPS). And the Spanish consortium is coordinated by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC).

Long Duration Balloons (LDBs) play an important role in the development of space technology. They are a less expensive way to access space and test instruments in an environment very similar to the east. In addition, the possibility to recover the payload after the flight provides valuable information and also allows its reuse. Apart from this, stratospheric balloons are low-cost platforms for scientific experimentation. In many cases, doing science in this way has many advantages. These scientific balloons can be launched from many locations around the world to support scientific needs and generally have a shorter development time than space projects. Some research fields for which balloons are used are:

 
  • Cosmic Ray Studies
  • Gamma Ray and X-Ray Astronomy
  • Optical and ultraviolet astronomy
  • Infrared Astronomy
  • Atmospheric Sciences
  • Magnetosphere
  • Micrometeorite particles
  • Cosmic microwave background studies

The LDB missions use zero-pressure helium balloons reaching volumes of up to 1.13x106 m3 and carrying a payload of up to 2700 kg at altitudes ranging from 36 km to 39 km.

The main objective of SUNRISE III will be to study the structure and dynamics of the magnetic field in the Sun's atmosphere, as did previous missions. By operating in the stratosphere, image degradation due to atmospheric turbulence can be avoided.

SUNRISE I and II provided more than 52 hours of high quality observation. Many results were obtained from these data, which allowed the science group to improve their understanding of small-scale magnetic fields and plasma dynamics in the photosphere. However, both flights were restricted to the solar photosphere and could only provide observation intervals of 60 minutes due to the limitation of the nacelle pointing system. The main objective of the third flight is to provide not only continuous information about the photosphere, but also a better understanding of the phenomena occurring in the chromosphere. This will be done by sampling both atmospheric layers in a multitude of spectral lines over a wide wavelength ranging from 300 to 860 nm.

More info: 

https://www.mps.mpg.de/solar-physics/sunrise

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