Results of China’s First Chinese Hα Solar Explorer (CHASE) Officially Released

On August 30, the results from China’s First Chinese Hα Solar Explorer (CHASE) was officially released. Earlier, on January 28 this year, Zhao Jian, director of the Earth Observation and Data Center of China National Space Administration (CNSA), said at a press conference that CHASE has achieved a series of technical and scientific experimental results, which will be released by CNSA at an opportune times throughout the year.

The successful launch of the apparatus has made history in being the first dedicated satellite for solar detection in China.

For the first time in the world, CHASE has realized on-orbit performance verification and engineering applications of satellite platform technologies with ultra-high positioning accuracy and ultra-high stability. Specifically, CHASE has achieved ultra-high positioning accuracy with a camera precision accuracy of 10-4° and a stability of 10-5°/s through a large bandwidth and high precision maglev actuator.

At the same time, CHASE completed an international first on-orbit application of a solar space Hα imaging spectrometer, successfully realized the international first space solar Hα spectral scanning imaging, and acquired the fine structure of solar Hα spectral lines, SiI spectral lines and FeI spectral lines on-orbit for the first time.

The atomic frequency discrimination solar velocity measurement navigator carried by CHASE has realized the first international on-orbit application of atomic frequency discrimination principle. This equipment can accurately determine the frequency change of sunlight in real time, and then obtain the radial velocity of a satellite relative to the sun.

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On October 14, 2021, CHASE was successfully launched at Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center. During its operation, CHASE carried out scientific observations according to its established mission plan, and has accumulated 50Tbit of original observation data and generated about 300Tbit of scientific data. This data is of great significance for the follow-up solar space exploration mission and enhancing China’s international influence in the field of space science.

It is worth mentioning that the scientific data of CHASE will be shared globally.

At present, CNSA has organized relevant units to put forward a series of mission plans, such as solar detection at solar-terrestrial L5 point, solar polar orbit detection and solar approach detection.