Scientists from the Space Research Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN) are developing a GLOWS device that will study solar wind. This is the first independent experiment of Poles for the NASA mission.

Scientists of the Space Research Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences are working on the GLOWS (GLObal solar Wind Structure) device, called a photometer, which will allow the observation of light emitted by the hydrogen atoms that make up the solar wind. This is one of the elements of NASA’s international mission Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP). The device is developed by the Polish Academy of Sciences, Princeton University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the National Laboratories in Los Alamos.

-We want to understand how the speed and density of the solar wind change over time at different heliographic latitudes, from the equator to the poles of the sun. This will allow us to understand the critical conditions for the formation and maintenance of biological processes around stars that, during their journey in the Galaxy, encounter various and time-varying “meteorological” conditions – said Dr Maciej Bzowski, head of the PAN team, working on GLOWS.