Speaking on the mission, Joe Davila, IRIS project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said that “IRIS will extend our observations of the sun to a region that has historically been difficult to study . . . understanding the interface region better improves our understanding of the whole corona and, in turn, how it affects the solar system.” By talking about how the corona influences the solar system, Davila is talking about space weather, namely solar storms, which have great potential to cause havoc here on Earth. As the Sun becomes more active as it nears solar maximum, the chances for Earthly impacts of solar storms increases dramatically. When the highly-charged particles of...
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