The solar corona observation instrument, CODEX (Coronagraph), jointly developed by South Korea and the United States, is set to launch to the International Space Station (ISS) to study the sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona.
The Korea AeroSpace Administration (KASA) and the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute announced on Nov. 1 that the Coronal Diagnostic Experiment (CODEX) will lift off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 11:29 a.m. on Nov. 5. CODEX, which completed pre-launch functional checks at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and Kennedy Space Center from July 29 to Aug. 2, is now waiting for launch aboard on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
CODEX will separate from the Falcon 9 approximately 10 minutes after liftoff and is expected to reach the ISS around 13 hours later. Once CODEX lands on the ISS, a robotic arm will install the instrument on the ISS’s External Launch Complex Platform (ELC3-3). Installation is expected to take about a week.
“CODEX is the world’s first instrument capable of capturing two-dimensional images of the corona’s density, temperature, and mass,” said Dr. Choi Sung-hwan, a researcher at the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute. “The data it gathers will provide foundational insights into solar activity.”
