NASA's CODEX to Unveil Solar Wind Mysteries in 2024 SpaceX Mission
October 30, 2024Co-investigator Nicholeen Viall emphasizes that CODEX will enable scientists to track the evolution of solar wind structures from their formation in the corona to their outward journey into space.
The instrument aims to investigate why the solar wind reaches temperatures around 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit, significantly hotter than the Sun's surface, and travels at nearly a million miles per hour.
NASA's Coronal Diagnostic Experiment (CODEX) is scheduled to launch in November 2024 aboard SpaceX's 31st commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station.
Designed as a solar coronagraph, CODEX will block sunlight to observe the Sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, providing new insights into the solar wind's origin and evolution.
CODEX will analyze two types of solar wind: one that streams directly outward and another that forms from opened magnetic field lines, releasing hot plasma into the solar wind.
This research is critical for improving space weather predictions, akin to understanding atmospheric conditions for hurricanes, and will aid in preparing for space weather impacts on Earth and spacecraft.
CODEX will complement ongoing missions like the Solar Orbiter and NASA's Parker Solar Probe, enhancing our understanding of solar wind formation and its variations in space.
By being stationed on the space station, CODEX will conduct unobstructed observations of the solar corona, coinciding with a period of high solar activity known as solar maximum.
The instrument builds on a history of similar experiments, including ground-based tests during solar eclipses and the 2019 BITSE balloon experiment, which confirmed the technique but did not meet long-term scientific goals.
The CODEX project is a collaborative effort involving NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, and Italy’s National Institute for Astrophysics.
Principal investigator Jeffrey Newmark describes CODEX as both a technology demonstration and a scientific instrument, enhancing traditional density measurements with special filters for temperature and speed.
During solar maximum, CODEX will measure the temperatures of plasma 'blobs' created during the solar cycle, with expectations of their locations changing due to increased magnetic complexity.
Summary based on 3 sources