TSIS-1 Solar Energy Measuring Instrument On ISS Has Just Been Turned On By NASA

TSIS-1 Solar Energy Measuring Instrument On ISS Has Just Been Turned On By NASA

NASA has just turned on the newest device which has the mission to measure the energy that’s coming from the Sun – the TSIS-1 instrument. TSIS-1, or the so-called Total and Spectral Solar Irradiance Sensor, has been attached to the ISS (the International Space Station) and has been turned on earlier this March and already started to collect data.

TSIS-1 is up and running

“TSIS-1 extends along data record that helps us understand the Sun’s influence on Earth’s radiation budget, ozone layer, atmospheric circulation, and ecosystems, and the effects that solar variability has on the Earth system and climate change,” explained Dong Wu, a NASA scientist working on the TSIS-1 project.

The TSIS-1 has been launched with a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in December 2017 from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Since then, the science team working on the TSIS-1 project has examined and tested the instrument.

“All systems are operating within their expected ranges. A lot of hard work remains for the team to interpret and validate the TSIS-1 data,” explained Peter Pilewskie, the lead of the science crew behind TSIS-1, at the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP), located in Boulder, in Colorado, USA.

NASA will share the TSIS-1 measurements with the scientific community

Since now, for the next 5 years, the NASA engineers from the Goddard Space Flight Center are charged with controlling the evolution and progress of TSIS-1 operations.

On the other hand, the LASP scientists, still under the agreement they’ve signed with NASA, are in charge with administering the specific Solar measurements and sending the obtained data to the NASA engineers for them to store and share the TSIS-1 measurements. Thus, the collected data will be accessible by other scientists and astronomers.

The TSIS-1 instrument is expected to collect important data about the Solar energy emissions.

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