Chandrayaan 2 Spots Sun's Coronal Mass Ejection That Even NASA Satellite Missed
The Solar Proton Event (SPEs) was also witnessed by NASA¡¯s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) orbiting the planet but it managed to miss the CME event that Chandrayaan-2 orbiter caught.
A Large Area Soft X-Ray Spectrometer (CLSS) payload on the Chandrayaan-2 Orbiter has detected solar proton events that are responsible for increased radiation exposure to humans in space.
ISRO
Also Read: What Is Solar Flare? How Is It Different From Solar Storm & Coronal Mass Ejections
Reported first by PTI, ISRO revealed that the instrument on January 18 also recorded CMEs (Coronal Mass Ejections) -- ionised charge particles released due to solar activity/ solar flares on the star¡¯s surface.
CME travels at a speed of about 1000 km/s and it takes around two to three days to reach the Earth. They often have the ability to cause ionisation on large scales in the Earth¡¯s middle atmosphere and are responsible for lighting up the polar sky with breathtaking auroras.
ISRO¡¯s official statement revealed that there were two M-class solar flares; one flare (M5.5) released energetic particles into interplanetary space whereas the other (M1.5) was accompanied by a Coronal Mass Ejection.
To the unaware, solar flares are classified in A, B, C, M and X class based on their strength and each letter adds a ten-fold increase to the energy output, indicating the M class flare would have been the second most impactful one, right after the X-class.
Representational Image: NASA
Also Read: Watch: Powerful Solar Flare Captured By NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory
The Solar Proton Event (SPEs) was also witnessed by NASA¡¯s Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) orbiting the planet but it managed to miss the CME event that Chandrayaan-2 orbiter caught.
Chandrayaan-2 orbiter was part of the Chandrayaan 2 mission by ISRO where it was supposed to land the Vikram Lander on the South Pole of the Moon. Sadly the landing didn¡¯t go as planned resulting in a hard landing on September 7, 2019.
However, ISRO revealed that the mission had achieved 98 percent success as the orbiter continues to share crucial data with the ground station.
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