IRIS will provide key insights into all these processes, and thereby advance our understanding of the solar drivers of space weather from the corona to the far heliosphere, by combining high-resolution imaging and spectroscopy for the entire chromosphere and adjacent regions. IRIS will resolve in space, time, and wavelength the dynamic geometry from the chromosphere to the low-temperature corona to shed much-needed light on the physics of this magnetic interface region.", "items": [], "extra_data": {} }, { "id": 347913, "url": "https://nasaviz.gsfc.nasa.gov/11089/#media_group_347913", "widget": "Video player", "title": "", "caption": "", "description": "A video showing the deployment of the Pegasus Rocket with the observatory from the Orbital L1011.
The rocket is dropped from the L1011 and is in unpowered, guided flight for 5 sec
The first stage lights and burns for 72 sec, then coasts for 17 sec. The rocket is at 71km prior to lighting of the second stage.
The second stage lights and burns for 73 sec, then coasts for 37 sec. The fairing separates at 131 sec. The rocket is at 600km prior to the firing of the third stage
Third stage burns for 69 sec placing the observatory in orbit at approximately 660km.
Once the payload is at 660km, the third stage and payload separate, at 786 seconds and the third stage carries out maneuvers to clear the observatory orbit.
The observatory then deploys the solar arrays, acquires the sun, and begins a 30 day on-orbit checkout and commissioning phase. After a 21 day outgassing and checkout period, the front door is opened and checkout of the optical systems started.
Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Conceptural Image Lab", "items": [ { "id": 316316, "type": "media", "extra_data": null, "title": null, "caption": null, "instance": { "id": 473000, "url": "https://nasaviz.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011000/a011089/IRISDeployAnimation_05189.jpg", "filename": "IRISDeployAnimation_05189.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "A video showing the deployment of the Pegasus Rocket with the observatory from the Orbital L1011.The rocket is dropped from the L1011 and is in unpowered, guided flight for 5 secThe first stage lights and burns for 72 sec, then coasts for 17 sec. The rocket is at 71km prior to lighting of the second stage.The second stage lights and burns for 73 sec, then coasts for 37 sec. The fairing separates at 131 sec. 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Designed to research the interface region in more detail than has ever been done before, IRIS’s instrument is a combination of an ultraviolet telescope and a spectrograph. The telescope provides high-resolution images, capturing data on about 1 percent of the sun at a time. The images can resolve very fine features, as small as 150 miles across. While the telescope can look at only one wavelength of light at a time, the spectrograph collects information about many wavelengths of light at once. The instrument then splits the sun’s light into its various wavelengths and measures how much of any given wavelength is present. Analysis of the spectral lines can also provide velocity, temperature and density information, key information when trying to track how energy and heat moves through the region. || ", "release_date": "2013-07-25T13:55:00-04:00", "update_date": "2023-05-03T13:51:58.814145-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 463607, "url": "https://nasaviz.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011300/a011314/IRIS_FL_still.png", "filename": "IRIS_FL_still.png", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "Still image from the first IRIS movie, 21 hours after opening the door.Credit: NASA/IRIS", "width": 1146, "height": 950, "pixels": 1088700 } }, { "id": 11313, "url": "https://nasaviz.gsfc.nasa.gov/11313/", "page_type": "Produced Video", "title": "IRIS Launch", "description": "NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) solar observatory separated from its Pegasus rocket and is in the proper orbit. This followed a successful launch by the Orbital Sciences Pegasus XL rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. It was the final Pegasus launch currently manifested by NASA. NASA's Launch Services Program at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida managed the countdown and launch.IRIS is a NASA Small Explorer Mission to observe how solar material moves, gathers energy and heats up as it travels through a little-understood region in the sun's lower atmosphere. This interface region between the sun's photosphere and corona powers its dynamic million-degree atmosphere and drives the solar wind.NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) spacecraft launched Wednesday at 7:27 p.m. PDT (10:27 p.m. EDT) from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. The mission to study the solar atmosphere was placed in orbit by an Orbital Sciences Corporation Pegasus XL rocket. || ", "release_date": "2013-07-19T09:00:00-04:00", "update_date": "2023-05-03T13:51:59.831825-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 463712, "url": "https://nasaviz.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011300/a011313/iris-chase_plane-H264_Good_1280x720_29.9700577_print.jpg", "filename": "iris-chase_plane-H264_Good_1280x720_29.9700577_print.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "B-roll of the Pegasus rocket that sent NASA's IRIS spacecraft into orbit. Credit: NASA TV.", "width": 1024, "height": 576, "pixels": 589824 } }, { "id": 11256, "url": "https://nasaviz.gsfc.nasa.gov/11256/", "page_type": "Produced Video", "title": "IRIS: Studying the Energy Flow that Powers the Solar Atmosphere", "description": "In late June 2013, the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, will launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. IRIS will tease out the rules governing the lowest layers of the solar atmosphere — historically some of the hardest to untangle. Known as the solar interface region, this is one of the most complex areas in the sun's atmosphere: all the energy that drives solar activity travels through it. The interface region lies between the sun’s 6,000-degree, white-hot, visible surface, the photosphere, and the much hotter multi-million-degree upper corona. Interactions between the violently moving plasma and the sun’s magnetic field in this area may well be the source of the energy that heats the corona to its million-degree temperatures, some hundreds and occasionally thousands of times hotter than the sun's surface. The chromosphere is also considered a candidate as the origin for giant explosions on the sun such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections. IRIS will use high-resolution images, data and advanced computer models to unravel how solar gases move, gather energy and heat up through the lower solar atmosphere. Outfitted with state-of-the-art tools, IRIS will be able to tease apart what's happening in the solar interface region better than ever before. || ", "release_date": "2013-06-19T07:00:00-04:00", "update_date": "2023-05-03T13:52:03.795213-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 465631, "url": "https://nasaviz.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011200/a011256/IRIStrailer340.jpg", "filename": "IRIStrailer340.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "IRIS Mission TrailerView the video on YouTube. For complete transcript, click here.", "width": 320, "height": 180, "pixels": 57600 } }, { "id": 11286, "url": "https://nasaviz.gsfc.nasa.gov/11286/", "page_type": "Produced Video", "title": "IRIS L-14 Media Briefing", "description": "Lying just above the sun's surface is an enigmatic region of the solar atmosphere called the interface region. A relatively thin region, just 3,000 to 6,000 miles thick, it pulses with movement: zones of different temperature and density are scattered throughout, while energy and heat course through the solar material. Understanding how the energy travels through this region – energy that helps heat the upper layer of the atmosphere, the corona, to temperatures of 1,000,000 kelvins, some thousand times hotter than the sun’s surface itself – is the goal of NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, or IRIS, scheduled to launch on June 26, 2013 from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base. Scientists wish to understand the interface region in exquisite detail, since energy flowing through this region has an effect on so many aspects of near-Earth space. For one thing, despite the intense amount of energy deposited into the interface region, only a fraction leaksthrough, but this fraction drives the solar wind, the constant stream of particles that flows out to fill the entire solar system. The interface region is also the source of most of the sun's ultraviolet emission, which impacts both the near-Earth space environment and Earth's climate. IRIS's capabilities are uniquely tailored to unravel the interface region by providing both high-resolution images and a kind of data known as spectra, which can see many wavelengths at once. For its high-resolution images, IRIS will capture data on about one percent of the sun at a time. While these are relatively small snapshots, IRIS will be able to see very fine features, as small as 150 miles across. || ", "release_date": "2013-06-04T12:00:00-04:00", "update_date": "2023-05-03T13:52:06.324886-04:00", "main_image": { "id": 465227, "url": "https://nasaviz.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a010000/a011200/a011286/scioverview720.jpg", "filename": "scioverview720.jpg", "media_type": "Image", "alt_text": "Video File for Newsrooms and EditorsCleanroom b-roll, launch, deploy, and beauty pass animations.", "width": 1280, "height": 720, "pixels": 921600 } } ], "sources": [], "products": [], "newer_versions": [], "older_versions": [], "alternate_versions": [] }