April's solar eclipse promises to be best yet for experiments
CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA. >>
University's Aroh Barjatya, the rockets' mission director, said in an email.
NASA's high-altitude jets also will take to the air again, chasing the moon's shadow with improved telescopes to study the sun's corona and surrounding dust.
“Dust sounds boring,” acknowledged NASA's eclipse program manager Kelly Korreck. “But at the same time, dust is actually really interesting. Those are the leftover remnants from when the solar system was forming.”
More than 600 weather balloons will be launched by college students along the track, providing livestreams while studying atmospheric changes. Cloudy skies shouldn't matter.
“Lucky for us, the balloons flying to 80,000 feet and above don't care if it's cloudy on the ground,” said Angela Des Jardins, an astrophysicist at Montana State University who's coordinating the nationwide project.
And if the Federal Aviation Administration approves, a 21-foot kite will lift a science instrument 3 miles above Texas in an experiment by the University of Hawaii's Shadia Habbal.
She, too, wants to get above any clouds that might hamper her observations of the sun.
Normally hidden by the sun's glare, the corona is on full display during a total solar eclipse, making it a prime research target. The spiky tendrils emanating thousands of miles (kilometers) into space are mystifyingly hotter than the sun's surface — in the millions of degrees, versus thousands.
“In terms of the value of total eclipses, science still cannot explain how the corona is heated to such extreme temperatures,” said retired NASA astrophysicist Fred Espenak, better known as Mr. Eclipse for all his charts and books on the subject.
The U.S. won't see another total solar eclipse on this scale until 2045, so NASA and everyone else is pulling out all the stops.
April's eclipse will begin in the Pacific and make landfall at Mazatlan, Mexico, heading up through Texas and 14 other U.S. states before crossing into Canada and exiting into the Atlantic at Newfoundland. Those outside the 115-mile-wide path, will get a partial eclipse.