The STEREO Mission: An Introduction

Abstract

The twin STEREO spacecraft were launched on October 26, 2006, at 00:52 UT from Kennedy Space Center aboard a Delta 7925 launch vehicle. After a series of highly eccentric Earth orbits with apogees beyond the moon, each spacecraft used close flybys of the moon to escape into orbits about the Sun near 1 AU. Once in heliospheric orbit, one spacecraft trails Earth while the other leads. As viewed from the Sun, the two spacecraft separate at approximately 44 to 45 degrees per year. The purposes of the STEREO Mission are to understand the causes and mechanisms of coronal mass ejection (CME) initiation and to follow the propagation of CMEs through the inner heliosphere to Earth. Researchers will use STEREO measurements to study the mechanisms and sites of energetic particle acceleration and to develop three-dimensional (3-D) time-dependent models of the magnetic topology, temperature, density and velocity of the solar wind between the Sun and Earth. To accomplish these goals, each STEREO spacecraft is equipped with an almost identical set of optical, radio and in situ particles and fields instruments provided by U.S. and European investigators. The SECCHI suite of instruments includes two white light coronagraphs, an extreme ultraviolet imager and two heliospheric white light imagers which track CMEs out to 1 AU. The IMPACT suite of instruments measures in situ solar wind electrons, energetic electrons, protons and heavier ions. IMPACT also includes a magnetometer to measure the in situ magnetic field strength and direction. The PLASTIC instrument measures the composition of heavy ions in the ambient plasma as well as protons and alpha particles. The S/WAVES instrument uses radio waves to track the location of CME-driven shocks and the 3-D topology of open field lines along which flow particles produced by solar flares. Each of the four instrument packages produce a small real-time stream of selected data for purposes of predicting space weather events at Earth. NOAA forecasters at the Space Environment

The Wide-Field Imager for Solar Probe Plus (WISPR)

“…The WISPR design draws its heritage from the SECCHI heliospheric imagers aboard the Solar Terrestrial Earth Relations Observatory (STEREO; Kaiser et al 2008) mission and from the SoloHI imager (Howard et al 2013) under development for ESA's Solar Orbiter mission scheduled for launch in 2017 (Müller et al 2013). In fact, SoloHI provides many of the design elements and subsystems for adaptation into the WISPR design.…”

Low polarised emission from the core of coronal mass ejections

“…EUVI and COR1 are the multi-wavelength EUV telescope and the innermost coronagraph of the Sun Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation (SECCHI) instrument suite (Howard et al 2008) aboard the twin Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory spacecraft (STEREO, see Kaiser et al 2008). Each of the COR1/STEREO telescopes has a field of view from 1.4 to 4 R and observes in a white-light waveband 22.5 nm wide centred at the Hα line at 656 nm (Thompson & Reginald 2008).…”

Interplanetary and Geomagnetic Consequences of Interacting CMEs of 13 – 14 June 2012

“…After the launch of twin Solar TErrestrial Relations Observatory spacecraft (STEREO: Kaiser et al 2008), the data from the Sun Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation (SECCHI: Howard et al 2008) have enabled us to continuously image CMEs from their lift-off in the corona up to the Earth and beyond Harrison et al, 2012;Liu et al, 2013;Möstl et al, 2015;Vemareddy and Mishra, 2015). These observations have also revealed direct evidence of CME-CME interaction when they are launched in close succession in the same direction Lugaz et al, 2012;Shen et al, 2012;Mishra, Srivastava, and Chakrabarty, 2015).…”