Explanation:
Launched ten years ago this week, SOHO (the SOlar and Heliospheric
Observatory)
still
enjoys an uninterrupted view of the Sun.
Twelve
sungazing
instruments on board the spacecraft
have explored the Sun's
internal structure, the extensive
solar atmosphere and
solar wind, and discovered over 1,000
comets
from a remarkable orbit around a point
about 1.5 million kilometers directly sunward of planet Earth itself.
At that location, known as a
Lagrange
point, the gravitational influence of the Earth and Sun are equal.
With scientific instrument teams distributed around the world,
the SOHO operations center is located at NASA's
Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Mission operations are planned through March of 2007 to
allow the study of a complete
11-year solar cycle.
Contributions from
SOHO's instruments are represented in the colorful montage image.
Happy
tenth anniversary SOHO!
