SORCE Team Celebrates 2 Years and Takes a Look Back

Two years of successful operation on-orbit! SORCE was launched on January 25, 2003 from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The spacecraft, instruments, and ground systems are functioning flawlessly, according to Gary Rottman, SORCE Principal Investigator. “I could not be more proud of the SORCE team for getting us to this point. This mission is providing improved SSI and TSI measurements like never before. My dream is to see one entire solar cycle measured with the SORCE instruments.” Tom Woods, SORCE Project Scientist, feels the most exciting moments in the last 2 years have been the launch, first light from the instruments, and more recently the new results concerning flare events and variability of the solar irradiance spectra. “The combination of great solar measurements by SORCE and the productive SORCE workshops have made for two wonderful years for the SORCE program,” says Woods. “Also, considering that there are over 30 mechanisms in the SORCE instruments and that they all continue to work flawlessly is an engineering marvel.”

Also, the SORCE team has been very busy over the past several months preparing approximately 18 individual papers to be published in Solar Physics. This special “topical issue” will be devoted exclusively to the SORCE mission, and will later be published in a hard cover version.

A summary article of the 2004 SORCE Science Meeting in New Hampshire will be published in the Nov/Dec issue of EOS’s The Earth Observer. A preview is on the SORCE website Earth_Observer_Nov-Dec04.pdf

To read more, see the January 2005 newsletter