Context: Recently,NASA has selected a new mission to study how the Sun generates and releases giant space weather storms – known as solar particle storms – into planetary space. For the mission, NASA has awarded $62.6 million to design, build and launch SunRISE no earlier than July 1, 2023.

• The Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment (SunRISE) will look into how Sun generates and releases the giant weather storms, known as the solar particle storms, into space

About SunRISE Mission

• The mission will look into how Sun generates and releases the giant weather storms, known as the solar particle storms, into Space.
• The mission will also help in greater understanding of the solar system.
• It will study the impact that solar particle storms have on planets
• The findings would help safeguard astronauts from solar storms while they travel to Mars or the Moon.
• It can help protect astronauts traveling to the Moon and Mars by providing better information on how the Sun’s radiation affects the space environment they must travel through.

About its working

• The mission design relies on six solar-powered CubeSats to simultaneously observe radio images of low-frequency emission from solar activity and share them via NASA’s Deep Space Network.
• The constellation of CubeSats would fly within 6 miles of each other, above Earth’s atmosphere, which otherwise blocks the radio signals SunRISE will observe.
• Together, the six CubeSats will create 3D maps to pinpoint where giant particle bursts originate on the Sun and how they evolve as they expand outward into space.
• This, in turn, will help determine what initiates and accelerates these giant jets of radiation.
• The six individual spacecraft will also work together to map, for the first time, the pattern of magnetic field lines reaching from the Sun out into interplanetary space.

About Solar storms

• They are violent events on the sun which can temporarily distort the earth’s magnetosphere – the region around the earth which is influenced by its magnetic field.
• Solar storms are a variety of eruptions of mass and energy from the solar surface.
• Flares, prominences, sunspots, coronal mass ejections are the common harbingers of solar activity, as are plages and other related phenomena seen at other wavelengths.
• These kinds of space weather activities affect earth and normal functioning of humans on earth.
• Solar storms can last only a few minutes to several hours but the effects of geomagnetic storms can linger in the Earth’s magnetosphere and atmosphere for days to weeks.

Note: A geomagnetic storm is a temporary disturbance of the Earth's magnetosphere caused by a solar wind shock wave and/or cloud of magnetic field that interacts with the Earth's magnetic field.