NASA chooses Ball Aerospace for CMEx mission concept study

Ball Aerospace was selected to manage a concept study for NASA’s Chromospheric Magnetism Explorer, a proposed mission concept that could provide new insights into how magnetism drives eruptive activity on and near the surface of the sun. The science of CMEx aims to help the scientific community better its understanding of our sun and its impacts on space, Earth and other planets. The prospective mission concept would use a near ultraviolet spectropolarimeter as its primary scientific instrument to make novel observations of the sun’s magnetic field as it evolves from the photosphere through the chromosphere, the layer of the sun’s atmosphere above the visible surface. This data will give scientists a better understanding of how magnetic energy buildup leads to eruptions such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections, a major gap in our current heliophysics research capabilities.