back to article Sun-gazing sat heads for the heavens

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) blasted off today at 15:23 GMT from Cape Canaveral following an aborted launch yesterday due to unfavourable wind conditions. The SDO launch. Pic: NASA SDO was carried aloft by an Atlas V rocket (see pic) en route to its final inclined geosynchronous orbit at around 36,000 km from Earth …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Annihilator
    Coat

    NASA dumbing down?

    Why does it have an IMAX camera on board, and why is it sending half a million mp3s per day back to its ground station?

    Sounds rather silly, not to mention staring at the sun is bad for you.

  2. Disco-Legend-Zeke
    Thumb Up

    It's Not...

    ...IMAX, its 4 16 megapixel digital cameras.

    The old satellite has 1.5 MP cameras

    http://www.n3kl.org/sun/index.html

  3. Gene Cash Silver badge
    Unhappy

    Didn't get to see the launch

    Central Florida was totally socked in with clouds.

    1. John H Woods Silver badge

      What are you talking about?

      Me and my family saw the launch (on the 2nd attempt) from the Saturn V museum on the Kennedy Space Center. There were plenty of people there (albeit somewhat less than for the aborted launch the day before) and it was damn cold. It was, however, sunny - and not very cloudy. We could see the concentric sound waves shimmering in the clear blue sky before the rocket hit the cloud level.

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like