Towards understanding solar flares

Abstract

Instrumentation and spacecraft payloads developed at Lockheed for solar flare studies are reviewed, noting the significance of the observations for adding to a data base for eventual prediction of the occurrence of flares and subsequent radiation hazards to people in space. Developmental work on the two solar telescopes on board the Skylab pallet was performed at a Lockheed facility, as was the fabrication of very-large-area proportional counter for flights on the Aerobee rocket in 1967. The rocket work led to the fabrication of the Mapping X Ray Heliometer on the Orbiting Solar Observatory and the X Ray Polychromator for the Solar Maximum Mission. The Polychromator consists of a bent crystal spectrometer for high time resolution flare studies over a wide field of view, and a flat crystal spectrometer for simultaneous polychromatic imaging at 7 different X ray wavelengths.