SDO | Solar Dynamics Observatory
SDO is designed to help us understand the Sun's influence on Earth and Near-Earth space by studying the solar atmosphere on small scales of space and time and in many wavelengths simultaneously.
SDO Movies
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View Stepping Stones to SDO Series
NEWSROOM 
- April 3, 2008 - Solar Dynamics Laboratory's Smart Design Fosters Perfect Fit
- Imagine a wedding dress or a tailored suit that fit the first time you try it on. That's pretty similar to how engineers felt when the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) spacecraft bus was lowered onto the propulsion module and it attached on the first try. "It's like lowering a telephone booth over a person," said Gary Davis, SDO propulsion subsystem manager at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "The mechanical people made the operation look easy. It's never easy. There are some mechanical things you can never model and predict."
- March 3, 2008 - NASA'S SDO Mission to Improve Predictions of Violent Space Weather
- About 93 million miles from us lies an immense nuclear furnace spanning 100 Earths. In just one second, it produces enough power to supply the entire United States for nine million years. It is the closest star, our sun. Although its light powers almost all life on Earth, the sun has a dark side. Storms from the sun can knock our finely tuned technological civilization off balance, disrupting satellites, power grids, and radio communication, including the Global Positioning System. Radiation from solar storms can cause cancer in astronauts on unshielded areas, like the moon's surface. Sometime between the end of 2008 and the beginning 2009, NASA will launch the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) to trace these disturbances back to their origin deep within the sun. SDO will discover how the sun builds up and explosively releases magnetic energy, which powers severe space weather.
THE SDO SPACECRAFT
- About the SDO Spacecraft
SDO INTERACTIVE
- Spin, rotate, and click on the SDO spacecraft using this new interactive application
INTEGRATION & TESTING
- Photos of Integration and Testing Milestones
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