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Arrival of Remote-sensing Instrument

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Engineers unpack a portion of the Sun-Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation (SECCHI), led by the Naval Research Laboratory. Shown here is the SCIP - Sun Centered Imaging Package - which consists of two white light coronagraphs and an extreme ultraviolet imager. Instruments and other spacecraft parts are typically wrapped in material to keep them clean during shipment. This way they're contained and free from external contamination.

Together with the SECCHI heliospheric imager, this suite of instruments will study the 3-D evolution of coronal mass ejections-the most energetic eruptions on the sun and primary cause of major geomagnetic storms-from their origin at the sun's surface through the corona and interplanetary medium to their eventual impact at Earth.

Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory