Seoul: South Korea’s national space agency announced its plan to send a solar coronagraph, developed in collaboration with the United States, to the International Space Station (ISS) for research on the sun’s outer atmosphere and solar wind. The Korean AeroSpace Administration (KASA) detailed this initiative, emphasizing its significance in solar research.

According to Yonhap News Agency, the Coronal Diagnostic Experiment (CODEX) will be transported to the ISS aboard Space X’s Falcon 9 rocket, launching from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday (U.S. time). This project is a joint effort between KASA and the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

As part of a bilateral solar research initiative, the coronagraph will be attached to the express logistics carrier on the ISS, enabling it to study the sun’s corona for up to 55 minutes during each 90-minute Earth orbit. This observation aims to enhance the understanding of the solar wind and improve predictions of space weather condit
ions.

KASA highlighted that CODEX is the first coronagraph globally designed to measure the temperature and velocity of the solar wind, along with its density. Solar wind, a continuous stream of particles and magnetic fields emitted from the sun’s outermost layer, significantly impacts space weather.