While solar radiation enables and sustains life on Earth, it also produces “space weather” that can profoundly impact different technologies, including telecommunications, satellite navigation, and the electric power grid.
The Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) is a NASA Small Explorer mission that provides high-resolution spectra and images of the Sun in the 133–141 nm and 278–283 nm wavelength bands.
In February, 2018, a specialized engineering team, led by principal investigator Dr. Qian Wu, traveled from Boulder, Colorado to a NASA facility in Palestine, Texas.
A team from the NCAR High Altitude Observatory, Johns Hopkins University, and Rice University, led by HAO scientist Wenbin Wang, was awarded a prestigious NASA Heliophysics Grand Challenge Research Grant to study the magnetosphere-ionosphere interaction known as subauroral polarization streams.