UAH Researcher Awarded $1.27M Grant for Solar Flare Mission

Dr. Athiray Panchapakesan leads NASA-backed project to study solar flares' impact on Earth and improve space weather forecasting.

Feb. 4, 2026 at 9:39am

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Dr. Athiray Panchapakesan, an assistant professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), has received a $1.27 million grant from NASA to fund a third flight of the Marshall Grazing Incidence X-ray Spectrometer (MaGIXS). The mission, scheduled to launch in 2026, aims to better understand how energy transfers during solar flare evolution and how these events impact Earth's magnetosphere and atmosphere.

Why it matters

Understanding solar flares and their impact on Earth is crucial for improving space weather forecasting, which is becoming increasingly important as human presence in space expands. The data collected by the MaGIXS instrument can help protect astronauts, satellites, and power grids from the effects of solar radiation.

The details

The MaGIXS instrument is a slitless X-ray imaging spectrometer that captures both spatial and spectral information simultaneously, providing faster, wider-field data than traditional slit spectrometers. The instrument has completed two successful flights in 2021 and 2024, observing X-ray emitting plasma from non-flaring solar active regions. MaGIXS-3 will focus on observing solar flares during their decay phase, which is critical to understanding the long-term effects of a flare, how energy is dissipated, and how the Sun's atmosphere recovers.

  • MaGIXS-3 is scheduled to launch from Poker Flat Missile Range, Alaska, in late 2026.
  • MaGIXS has completed two successful flights in 2021 and 2024.

The players

Dr. Athiray Panchapakesan

An assistant professor in the Center for Space Plasma and Aeronomic Research (CSPAR) at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and the principal investigator for the MaGIXS project.

Dr. Patrick Champey

A researcher at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and a collaborator on the MaGIXS project.

Dr. Don Gregory

A Distinguished Professor at UAH who provided guidance to Dr. Champey during the development of the MaGIXS instrument's grazing incidence mirror system.

Dr. Amy Winebarger

The principal investigator of the MaGIXS-1 and MaGIXS-2 missions, who mentored Dr. Panchapakesan in calibrating the instrument and demonstrating the unfolding of solar X-ray overlappograms.

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What they’re saying

“The overall goal is to understand how plasma temperature and composition in the solar corona change and evolve during the decay phase of a solar flare.”

— Dr. Athiray Panchapakesan, Principal Investigator

“X-ray photons from the Sun first enter the telescope at shallow angles and reflect off finely polished surfaces – think of skipping a rock across the smooth surface of a calm pond. These X-ray photons then reflect off a grating, which disperses them into different wavelengths – similar to how a prism separates white light into its color constituents. These photons are finally detected by a camera, where the images of the solar flare, broken into different X-ray energies, are digitized and recorded.”

— Dr. Patrick Champey, Researcher

What’s next

MaGIXS-3 is scheduled to launch from Poker Flat Missile Range, Alaska, in late 2026 to capture the first spatially, spectrally, and temporally resolved soft X-ray observations of a solar flare during its decay phase.

The takeaway

The data collected by the MaGIXS instrument can help improve space weather forecasting, which is crucial for protecting astronauts, satellites, and power grids from the effects of solar radiation as human presence in space expands.