@LockheedMartin in Palo Alto, California.

https://twitter.com/Dr_ThomasZ/status/1491888415129972741

Designed by Lockheed Martin in our Advanced Technology Center (ATC) in Palo Alto, CA, MUSE was selected by NASA in February 2022 as one of two missions that will study the sun or its surroundings to better understand its impact on Earth and our atmosphere.

MUSE’s mission is to help NASA better understand the sun’s million-degree atmosphere or corona, including its eruptions and explosions, in a way that previous missions haven’t been able to do. The sun’s eruptions – called coronal mass ejections – and explosions – called solar flares – lead to a phenomenon called space weather, which has large implications for Earth.

“In our high-tech society, a lot of our technology is sensitive to the disturbances that are created when the sun gets extremely active,” said Bart De Pontieu, principal physicist at the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory who serves as the mission’s Principal Investigator. “Space weather can cripple satellites, endanger the safety of astronauts, and even cause disturbances on the Earth’s electrical power grid.”

In addition to being responsible for the design and build of the mission, Lockheed Martin will also take the lead in the mission’s science operations and the analysis of the solar observations. 

Continue reading at https://www.lockheedmartin.com/en-us/news/features/2022/muse.html

“MUSE and HelioSwarm will provide new and deeper insight into the solar atmosphere and space weather,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “These missions not only extend the science of our other heliophysics missions—they also provide a unique perspective and a novel approach to understanding the mysteries of our star.”

MUSE

The MUSE mission will help scientists understand the forces driving the heating of the Sun’s corona and the eruptions in that outermost region that are at the foundation of space weather. The mission will offer deeper insight into the physics of the solar atmosphere by using a powerful instrument known as a multi-slit spectrometer to observe the Sun’s extreme ultraviolet radiation and obtain the highest resolution images ever captured of the solar transition region and the corona.

The mission will also provide complementary observations from heliophysics research such as the Extreme UltraViolet Spectroscopic Telescope and ground-based observatories.

“MUSE will help us fill crucial gaps in knowledge pertaining to the Sun-Earth connection,” said Nicola Fox, director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters. “It will provide more insight into space weather and complements a host of other missions within the heliophysics mission fleet.”

The primary goal of the MUSE mission is to investigate the causes of coronal heating and instability, such as flares and coronal mass ejections, and gain insight into the basic plasma properties of the corona. MUSE will obtain high-resolution images of the evolution of solar flare ribbons in a field of view focused on a large, active region on the Sun.

The principal investigator for the MUSE mission is Bart DePontieu of the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center (LMATC) of Palo Alto, California. This mission has a budget of $192 million. LMATC will provide project management.

Continue reading at https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/new-sun-missions-to-help-nasa-better-understand-earth-sun-environment