When the six tiny spacecraft of NASA’s SunRISE (Sun Radio Interferometer Space Experiment) mission settle into their orbits high above Earth after launching later this year, they’ll function as one giant radio dish to track the rumbles of radio bursts coming from deep within the sun’s atmosphere, or corona. Those bursts are generated by solar energetic particle events that could, in extreme cases, irradiate unprotected astronauts and satellites; tracking the radio waves they generate with SunRISE will help scientists mitigate their effects.

The latest science news on astronomy, astrobiology, and space exploration from Phys.org.