Launch and docking of the CODEX coronagraph to the the International Space Station
QUANDO:November 4 2024
The CODEX instrument has been launched at 3.29 am on the morning of November 5, 2024 (Italian time) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, in Florida (9.29 pm, November 4, local time), aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, a solar coronagraph which it will be installed on the International Space Station (ISS) to collect important information on the solar wind and its formation. Docking with the ISS took place successfully at 4.02 pm (Italian time).
Codex is a coronagraph, which is an instrument that blocks the intense light coming from the surface of the Sun to be able to see the details in its outermost region, the corona. The instrument is a collaboration between NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (Kasi). INAF contributed to the calibration of the instrument in its OPSys (Optical Payload System) space laboratory, hosted in ALTEC, Turin, and will also collaborate on the analysis of coronal images.
The people involved in the Codex project of the INAF-Astrophysical Observatory of Turin are:
Silvano Fineschi, Lucia Abbo, Gerardo Capobianco, Valeria Caracci, Silvio Giordano, Hervé Haudemand, Federico Landini, Davide Loreggia, Roberto Susino, Luca Zangrilli
More information in the article published on Media INAF
https://www.media.inaf.it/2024/11/05/codex-in-viaggio-verso-la-stazione-spaziale/