STEREO

Mission

Kind: Solar observation

State: Successful

Place: Sun

Operator: NASA

Instruments: 1) Sun Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation, 2) In-situ Measurements of Particles and CME Transients, 3) Plasma and Suprathermal Ion Composition, 4) STEREO/WAVES,

Date

Start:

End: 20160923

Duration: Planned: 2 years STEREO-A elapsed: 14 years, 14 days STEREO-B final: 9 years, 10 months, 27 days

Mission Ending

Last Contact: STEREO-B: September 23, 2016

Rocket

Rocket: Delta II 7925-10L

Kind: NASA

Manufacturer: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

Mass: 619 kg (1,364 lb)

Launch Site: Cape Canaveral SLC-17B

Flyby

"Requesting permission for flyby." Maverick - Top Gun

Orbit

Reference System: Heliocentric

Lander

"The journey, not the arrival, matters; the voyage, not the landing." - Paul Theroux

STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory) is a solar observation mission. Two nearly identical spacecraft were launched in 2006 into orbits around the Sun that cause them to respectively pull farther ahead of and fall gradually behind the Earth. This enables stereoscopic imaging of the Sun and solar phenomena, such as coronal mass ejections. Contact with STEREO-B was lost in 2014, but STEREO-A is still operational.