China Launches New Satellite, Study the Sun and Weather Forecast

VIVA – China has launched a new satellite that will study the sun and weather forecast. The satellite flying over the March 2D Rocket is the Advanced Space-based Solar Observatory (ASO-S) named Kuafu-1 and launched from the Jiuquan satellite launch center, Mongolia on October 9, 2022.

The ASO-S or Kuafu-1 satellite is equipped with a magnetograph, a coronagraph, and an X-ray imager. Its purpose is to solve the mysteries of solar eruptions as quoted from the Greekreporter site. 

China has sent satellites with individual sun-gazing instruments into space before, but the nine hundred million yuan or around US$126 million. ASO-S is its first observatory with a suite of tools, according to Nature.

ASO-S aims to carry out simultaneous observations of the beacon and CME to understand the connection and the mechanism of its formation. The observatory would be in orbit during the peak of the solar cycle in 2024 to 2025 when numerous eruptions can be observed.

Later, the spacecraft will also study how energy is transported through the different layers of the Sun's atmosphere, and how the evolution of flares and CMEs is affected by the Sun's magnetic field.

ASO-S is designed to run for at least four years and generate about 500 gigabytes of data each day.