For all those who aren’t aware what FOXI is, it is a sounding rocket mission which is designed to use X-ray vision of it’s to search for nano-flares while staring into the sun directly. These rockets help scientists get results rapidly because they are smaller in size, economical to build and faster also as compared to large satellites and missions. The first FOXI flight had taken off in 2012 and was successful to image a small and in progress solar flare. The 2nd one took off in 2014 and successfully detected the X-ray emission from nano flares. As per reports from NASA it is all set to take off its 3rd flight from White Sands missile range, White Sands, New Mexico around September 7, 2018.
FOXI Specialty
As per the principal investigator of the mission, space physicist Lindsay Glesener of Minnesota University of Minneapolis, the speciality of FOXI is that it is specially built to image high energy X-rays of the Sun by directly focusing on them. It has the ability to travel at the speed of 190 miles up over the Earth’s atmospheric shield. The team FOXI has made use of very hard and smooth surfaces that are tilted to an angle less than half a degree in order to gently concentrate the X-ray lights coming in to the point of focus. The upcoming mission is also equipped with a new telescope with an ability to image soft X-rays or the lower energy X-rays besides giving more precise temperatures. This will in-turn help the team to spot those nano-flare signatures that the hard X-ray telescopes might miss on.
Nano Flares
When the magnetic lines in the Suns atmosphere get entangled and stretched up to a level where they break like a rubber band, small but kind of intense eruptions called Nano flares are born. These Nano flares release energy that accelerates particles to a speed that is very much similar to that of light. Some scientists believe that this process is responsible for heating the solar atmosphere to a blazing million degree Fahrenheit. The scientists also say that the whole process is not visible to the human naked eye because it occurs in colors of light that are extreme.
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