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One of the signs explaining the Solar Dynamics Observatory. It reads

SDO: Solar Dynamics Observatory

The Solar Dynamics Observatory, the first mission to be launched for NASA's Living with a Star program, is designed to understand the causes of solar variability and its impacts on earth.

SDO will help us better understand the sun's influence on earth and near-earth space by studying the solar atmosphere on small scales of space and time in many wavelengths simultaneously.

SDO's goal it to understand, driving towards a predictive capability, the solar variations that influence life on Earth and humanity's technological systems by determining:

• How the Sun's magnetic field is generated and structured
• How this stored magnetic energy is converted and released into the heliosphere and geospace in the form of solar wind, energetic particles, and variations in the solar irradiance.
• Launch - 2008 [heroicrelics: it was actually launched February 11, 2010]

• Inclined geosynchronous orbit
• Dedicated ground station
• Mass of the spacecraft at launch is 3,200 kg (payload is 270 kg; fuel is 1,400 kg)
• Span of the extended solar panels is 6.25 m
• Overall length along the sun-pointing axis is 4.5 m, and each side is 2.22 m
• Continuous 150 Mbps Ka-Band downlink

SDO Hardware from the United Kingdom

• E2V Technologies: AIA and HMI CCDs
• ABSL Power Solutions Ltd. (ABSL): Qualification and Flight Lithium Ion Batteries
• Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL): Camera Electronics
• Marotta UK Limited: Propulsion Module Fill and Drain Valves

In the upper left of the picture is the telescope mount flight article in early stages of construction.