NASA's SunRISE Mission To Launch No Earlier Than Mid-2027

India, Oct. 7 -- NASA has announced that its SunRISE (Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment) mission will launch no earlier than mid-2027. The heliophysics mission will hitch a ride on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from the U.S. space agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida as a rideshare with a payload sponsored by the United States Space Force's Space Systems Command.

The mission's six toaster-oven-size small satellites, or SmallSats, will operate as one giant radio dish slightly above geosynchronous orbit at an altitude of about 22,000 miles, and will track the rumbles of radio bursts coming from within the Sun's atmosphere, or corona.

The bursts are generated by accelerated particles leaving the Sun. The solar radio waves arrive a...