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D. Dobrzycka, J.L. Kohl, L.D. Gardner, L. Strachan, M.P. Miralles, P.L. Smith, R. Suleiman, A. Panasyuk, J. Michels, Y.-K. Ko (CfA)
The Spartan 201 Ultraviolet Coronal Spectrometer (UVCS/Spartan) is an instrument developed to conduct spectroscopic studies of the extended solar corona and its expansion into the solar wind. It was designed to be Shuttle deployed and retrieved and has already flown in 1993, 1994, 1995, 1997, and 1998 providing a consistent set of data that span several years of the declining and rising phases of the solar cycle. The advantage of this instrument is that its inflight performance characteristics can be determined from the preflight and postflight laboratory calibration.
The last, Spartan 201-5 mission was launched aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-95) on 29 October 1998 at 2:19:20 PM (EST). Spartan 201 made autonomous observations of the Sun and its corona for approximately 43 hours during 26 orbits around the Earth. These observations were coordinated with the Ultraviolet Coronagraph Spectrometer on board the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (UVCS/SOHO). One of the main goals of the Spartan 201-5 mission was to update calibration of the UVCS/SOHO and to provide continuity of measurements from the period before and after solar minimum.
We review the successfully accomplished goals of the UVCS/Spartan on the Spartan 201-5 flight and describe the radiometric and spectrometric comparison of the streamer data to that of UVCS/SOHO.
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\noindent This work is supported by NASA under Grant NAG 5-613 to the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and by NASA under Grant NAG5-3192 to the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, by the Italian Space Agency, and by Swiss Funding Agencies.
If the author provided an email address or URL for general inquiries, it is a
s follows:
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/cfa/spartan/