At 18:20 UTC on July 30, a Black Brant IX launched from the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico carrying the MaGIXS payload to a 307-kilometer apogee. The goal of the MaGIXS – Marshall Grazing Incidence X-ray Spectrometer – payload is to answer some important unanswered questions in heliophysics: why and how the corona is so much hotter than the surface of the Sun. One possible explanation is small flares that cause the magnetic field of the Sun to tangle and occasionally superheat the corona. A second possibility is constant waves of energy which leave the surface and heat the corona.

MaGIXS will figure this out by observing in soft X-rays. Other missions have done this, but MaGIS is unique in that it will observe the Sun’s temperature at a much higher resolution, and thus be able to tell the difference in temperature between different parts of the Sun’s active regions in higher detail than before.

Besides heliophysics, gaining a better understanding of coronal heating will benefit society at large because of improved predictions for solar flare and coronal mass ejections, which can and have destroyed entire electrical grids and even satellites in orbit before.

After its observations, the payload was recovered via parachute on the ground.

More Information

NASA pre-launch press release

NASA post-launch press release