[reporter] Well NASA is celebrating 20 years of studying the Sun.
Today is the 20th Anniversary of NASA's
SOHO Mission and here to tell us more about it from NASA's Goddard Space
Flight Center in Greenbelt Maryland is NASA Scientist Doctor Alex Young.
Thank you for joining us. [Dr. Young] Thank You it's my pleasure.
[reporter] So, How has SOHO changed our understanding of the Sun and Solar System?
[Dr. Young] Well SOHO has given us this first look at the
Sun both at a holistic picture as well as all the detail
that are happening and this global view we've been able to
look inside of the Sun as well as seeing this incredible
dynamic phenomena happening on the surface as well as
things lifting off and exploding into space
filling our entire solar system and this is something we have never done
before with such amazing, amazing detail with such a
huge suite of all these amazing scientific instrumentation.
[reporter] cool. now we heard that SOHO was almost lost
in space. Could you tell us what happen? [Dr. Young] Yeah, so not long after
the mission began, during a normal maneuvers
scientists and engineers lost contact with the spacecraft, but
fortunately you have this incredibly smart
and ingenious team of scientists and engineers
who work really hard over several months and
what was almost a heroic level of effort
they were able to recover the spacecraft and
keep it going and now we've had it for 20 years.
[reporter] Wow, Now why does NASA study the Sun?
[Dr. Young] Well, in addition to just being the
this center of the solar system that's driving all of the heat and light
which is important to us. The Sun is constantly throwing off huge
amounts of energy and material and this stuff travels through the
solar system and it can impact the Earth. It can produce beautiful
phenomenon like aurora but it can also impact our
technology, our communications our satellites and even our
power grids. So it's really important that we understand both
the beginnings and origins of this as well how to one day
forecast it just like we do here with
weather on Earth and we are getting close to that right now.
[reporter] Well the SOHO mission lasted much longer than planned. How is it
still being used today? [Dr. Young] Well right now, SOHO
is the first operational spacecraft
space weather instrument. This is in particular is called
a chronograph, this is a telescope that creates an artificial
eclipse and allows us to block out the bright Sun and see
the outer part of the solar atmosphere, we can see all of this
amazing matter blasting out. As a matter of fact we've even
been able to study over 3 thousand comets
which not something that the mission was originally designed for.
[reporter] Great, now where can we go to learn more?
[Dr. Young] You can go find out more at NASA.gov/sunearth
and you can also check us out at Twitter
@NASASunEarth [reporter] Great, Dr. Alex Young
thank you so much for joining us. [Dr. Young] Thank You.