Aging (Instruments) in Space

  • Released Friday, July 23rd, 2021
  • Updated Friday, August 25th, 2023 at 12:14AM
  • ID: 4911

The space environment is harsh not only on humans and other living organisms, but instruments also.
Damage from solar energetic particles and cosmic rays can slowly degrade performance of an instrument. Fortunately there are ways to characterize and correct for this degradation. The graphics on this page are based on the tutorial AIApy: Modeling Channel Degradation over Time.

Plot of the change in instrument sensitivity with time for the AIA instruments on SDO.  Note some filters are far more strongly affected than others

Plot of the change in instrument sensitivity with time for the AIA instruments on SDO. Note some filters are far more strongly affected than others




After almost a year of operations, there is already a suggestion of a change in instrument response. Here we have AIA 304 data with the color table applied to the raw data (above) and the recalibrated data (below).
After less than a year, we see a small degradation in performance in this un-recalibrated image.

After less than a year, we see a small degradation in performance in this un-recalibrated image.

Here is the same data as the image above, recalibrated with the same color table applied.

Here is the same data as the image above, recalibrated with the same color table applied.




Three years later, there is a much more noticeable difference in the calibrated vs. uncalibrated imagery.

Another seven years and the difference is really difficult to miss.

For More Information

See NASA.gov



Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio


Missions

This visualization is related to the following missions:

Datasets used in this visualization

SDO AIA 304 (A.K.A. 304 Filter) (Collected with the AIA sensor)
JOINT SCIENCE OPERATIONS CENTER

Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details, nor the data sets themselves on our site.