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Modern Solar Facilities – Advanced Solar Science, 17–26 F. Kneer, K. G. Puschmann, A. D. Wittmann (eds.) c  Universitätsverlag Göttingen 2007 Future solar space missions B. Fleck ESA Research and Scientific Support Department, c/o NASA/GSFG, Greenbelt, MD, USA Email: bernhard.fleck@esa.int Abstract. The coming years promise to be the golden era of solar and heliospheric physics, with STEREO, Hinode (Solar-B) and SDO enhancing the current fleet of solar space missions and affording new opportunities for improved understanding of the Sun-heliosphere system. Looking beyond that, however, there is a significant gap until Solar Orbiter will be launched in 2015 (nearly 20 years after the launch of SOHO). This paper provides an overview of the next generation of solar space missions. 1 Introduction Space-borne observations from Yohkoh, SOHO, TRACE, and RHESSI have produced stunning results that have invigorated solar research and challenged existing models of the Sun. The next generation of solar space missions that includes Hinode (known as Solar-B before its launch on 21 September 2006), STEREO (launched on 25 October 2006), SDO, Solar Orbiter, Solar Sentinels, and other smaller, focused missions promises to continue this “solar renaissance” by providing the ability to investigate solar processes on their fundamental scales, whether sub-arcsecond or global in nature, and by adding new viewing angles — high latitude, far-side, and out of Sun-Earth line viewing as well as close encounters. 2 Hinode Hinode (“sunrise”, formerly known as Solar-B; Shimizu et al. 2002) is an ISAS mission with US, UK and ESA participation as follow-on to the highly successful Yohkoh mission. It was launched on 21 September 2006. The key scientific objectives of Hinode are to study the generation and transport of magnetic fields and their role in heating and structuring the chromosphere and corona, and in eruptive events and flares. The 3-axis stabilized satellite (total mass ≈ 900 kg) was launched into a polar sun-synchronous orbit with inclination 97.9◦ and an altitude of approximately 600 km. The nominal mission lifetime is three years. Hinode’s scientific payload comprises three instruments. At the heart of Hinode is a diffraction limited 50-cm aperture Solar Optical Telescope (SOT), which feeds a Focal Plane Package (FPP) designed for high resolution photospheric and chromospheric imaging and spectro-polarimetry. In addition there are two coronal instruments, the X-Ray Telescope (XRT) and the Extreme-ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (EIS). The SOT is the largest solar telescope launched into space. It provides diffraction limited resolution from 3880 – 6600 Å and feeds the FPP which consists of the following three main components: 18 B. Fleck: Future solar space missions (i) a broad-band interference filter imager (BFI), (ii) a narrow-band tunable birefringent filter imager (NFI), (iii) a spectro-polarimeter (SP), essentially a space version of the HAO Advanced Stokes Polarimeter. The image is stabilized to better than 0.02 arcsec over a range from 0.02 to 20 Hz by a correlation tracker and active tilt mirror. The broad-band filter system makes diffraction-limited images with 0.05 arcsec pixels in the Ca II H line, CN and G bandheads, and continuum bands. Its maximum field-of-view (FOV) is 216×108 arcsec2 . It has a common focal plane with the narrow-band filter system, which makes filtergrams, (vector) magnetograms, Dopplergrams , and Stokes images in several photospheric lines, Mg b, and Hα. It has 0.08 arcsec pixels and a FOV up to 165×328 arcsec2 . The spectro-polarimeter makes vector magnetic measurements from Stokes spectra of the Fe I lines 6301 and 6302 Å, with 0.16 arcsec pixels and a FOV same as that of the narrow-band filter. The SP and filter imagers can be used to observe simultaneously on the same target region. XRT is an enhanced version of the SXT instrument on Yohkoh, providing coronal images at wavelengths from 2 to 60 Å. The image scale is 1 arcsec/pixel which is a factor 2.5 better than that of SXT, and it responds to a broader range of plasma temperatures. XRT is a grazing-incidence (GI) modified Wolter I X-ray telescope, of 35 cm inner diameter and 2.7 m focal length. The 2048×2048 back-illuminated CCD has 13.5 μm pixels, corresponding to 1.0 arcsec and giving full Sun field of view. A small optical telescope using the same CCD provides visible light images for coalignment with the SOT. EIS consists of a...

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