NASA’s Next Solar Mission Will Use Six Spacecraft to Make One Giant Telescope

Want to build the largest radio telescope to fly in space? Here’s an easier technique: Design six tiny satellites to fly in formation and work together. That’s the approach of a NASA’s new Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment (SunRISE) mission, which is scheduled to launch no earlier than July 2023. SunRISE aims to help scientists understand the complex relationship between the sun’s activity and a host of dangerous phenomena around Earth called space weather. The mission selection comes amid a burst of solar science and an emphasis on missions that incorporate space-weather prediction into plans for human spaceflight beyond low Earth orbit. “We are so pleased to add a new mission to our fleet of spacecraft that help us better understand the sun, as well as how our star influences the space environment between planets,” Nicky Fox, director of NASA’s Heliophysics Division, said in a NASA statement. “The more we know about how the sun erupts with space weather events, the more we can mitigate their effects on spacecraft and astronauts.”