Don’t look directly at the sun. Unless you’re MUSE – the Multi-slit Solar Explorer – in which case, that is exactly what you should do.
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