Probe to study Solar Flares

Scientists have been giving details of a new mission to explore the Sun. Solar-B is a Japanese spacecraft which will have three telescopes to study solar flares, the huge bursts of energy which erupt from the Sun's surface.

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It will be intersting to see just what this craft manages to dicover, especially as these solar flares not only disrupt out comunications but also cause serious problems for space missions.

It is about time a new program has been started. Other than SOHO, I don't beleive any other such plans exist, at least from what I've been paying attention to.


Some how I can't help but wonder why they are studying the flare so intently. Weapons applications is all I can think of, but worse case is generally one of the first things I do think about any ways. LOL

If any of you are wondering, the second thing is how to counter the worse case.

Originally posted by ADVISOR
Some how I can't help but wonder why they are studying the flare so intently. Weapons applications is all I can think of, but worse case is generally one of the first things I do think about any ways. LOL

if they are truley(sp) planning on going to Mars they will have to understand solar flares as well, i believe they give off huge amounts of radiation that are potentially fatal to astronaughts?

Sure but plans to go there in the past were not delayed or stopped because of lack of radiation protection.

Exactly. They were stoped because of lack of money. But that does not mean that they didn't need to study the solar flares. They simply didn't get any chance on that due to the lack of money