Year of the Comet
Comet C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS)

PANSTARRS information

Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON)

ISON information

Web Extras

Spying on the Sun

During the next few years, a multitude of new spacecraft will investigate our stormy star in unprecendented detail.
By Francis Reddy
Published: April 25, 2005
Space missions dedicated to studying the Sun have a long legacy. NASA's first space station, Skylab, carried the Apollo Telescope Mount, an instrument astronauts used to observe the Sun in optical, ultraviolet, and X-ray wavelengths for about 9 months beginning in 1973. Other important solar missions include Helios (1974 and 1976), NASA's Solar Maximum Mission (1980), the ongoing joint NASA and European Space Agency (ESA) mission Ulysses (1990), and the Japanese X-ray satellite Yokoh (1991).
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