The SWOOPS ion spectrometer
Los Alamos National Laboratory
SWOOPS Instrument Page
SWOOPS stands for "Solar Wind Observations Over the Poles of the Sun".
That's a big name for 2 small instruments! You see, SWOOPS is actually made up of 2 instruments, the ion spectrometer and the electron spectrometer.
SWOOPS is making a map of the solar wind within the heliosphere. The heliosphere is the area in space that contains the Earth, the planets and the solar wind as far as it reaches. After SWOOPS is done, we'll have the best 3-D map of the solar wind within heliosphere that we have ever had!
Sometimes solar wind can cause space weather storms that can affect our satellites and our life on
Earth. So, we need to know all about the solar wind. SWOOPS is helping us do just that.
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