The Solar Maximum Missionsatellite (or SolarMax) was designed to investigate solar phenomenon, particularly solar flares. It was launched on Valentine's Day (14th February) 1980.
Whilst not unique in this endeavour, the SMM was notable in that its useful life compared with similar spacecraft was significantly increased by the direct intervention of a manned space mission. In 1984 the Space Shuttle Challenger intercepted it, manoeuvering the SSM into the shuttle's payload bay for maintenance and repairs.
Significantly, the SMM's ACRIM instrument packgage showed that, contrary to common sense, the Sun is actually brighter during the sunspot cycle maximum (when the most number of dark 'sunspots' is facing Earth). This is because sunspots are surrounded by bright features called faculae, which more than cancel the darkening effect of the sunspot.
The Solar Maximum Mission ended on 2 December 1989 when the spacecraft finally re-entered the atmosphere and burned up.
The SolarMaximumMission (SMM) was launched on 14 February 1980 to, primarily, study the Sun during the high part of the solar cycle.
SMM was recovered by the space shuttle Challenger in April 1984 and serviced in orbit.
Since the SMM views the Earth during the nighttime portion of each orbit, only about 1 event on 40 is detected with a pi/6 sr field of view for which the spectra are not badly contaminated by the shield-processed contributions.
SMM was launched on a Thor-Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral on February 14, 1980, and remained in operation for nearly ten years; its life ended when it entered the earth's atmosphere in November 1989.
Both these instruments were extremely high-resolution X-ray spectrometers designed to observe the soft X-ray line spectrum from solar flares and active regions which occurred in profusion at the start and end of the mission, and were still in evidence during the middle years of the 1980s when there was a minimum in solar activity.
Data from SMM have proved to be a highly valuable insight into the mechanisms of solar activity -- flares, coronal mass ejections, active regions, plasma flows etc. The scientists who have worked on the data analysis have an international background and have made important advances in solar physics.
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