Vladimir Kuznetsov, director of the Institute of Terrestrial Magnetism, Ionosphere and Radio Wave Propagation at the Russian Academy of Sciences (IZMIRAN), said the satellite and its solar X-ray telescope allowed Russian scientists to study the solar corona and the impact of solar flashes on near-Earth outer space.
Russian scientists discovered for the first time areas with plasma temperatures of 10 million degrees Celsius (the usual temperature of the Sun's atmosphere is 1-2 million degrees) in the solar corona. The data obtained from the satellite helped scientists better understand the origin and effects of magnetic storms on Earth.
The Coronas-F satellite, the second in the CORONAS (Complex Orbital Near-Earth Observations of the Solar Activity) series, was launched on July 31, 2001 from the Plesetsk space center in Russia into a circular orbit with an altitude of 507km. The satellite was oriented towards the Sun and was equipped with instruments for studying solar flares and solar energetic particle (SEP) events.
