High-Energy and Particle Physics

NASA Mission Celebrates 10 Years & 40,000 X-ray Flares

9 Feb 2012

RHESSI has observed more than 40,000 X-ray flares, helped craft and refine a model of how solar eruptions form, and fueled additional serendipitous science papers on such things as the shape of the Sun and thunder-storm-produced gamma ray flashes.

NASA small explorer mission celebrates 10 years and 40,000 X-ray flares

9 Feb 2012

On February 5, 2002, NASA launched what was then called the High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (HESSI) into orbit. Renamed within months as the Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) after Reuven Ramaty, a deceased NASA scientist who had long championed the mission, the spacecraft's job was to observe giant explosions on the sun called solar flares. Ten years since its launch ...

NASA small explorer mission celebrates ten years and forty thousand X-ray flares

9 Feb 2012

(PhysOrg.com) -- On February 5, 2002, NASA launched what was then called the High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (HESSI) into orbit. Renamed within months as the Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) after Reuven Ramaty, a deceased NASA scientist who had long championed the mission, the spacecraft's job was to observe giant explosions on the sun called solar flares.