Russia to launch solar probe in January

MOSCOW, December 15 (RIA Novosti) - Russia will launch on January 29 a scientific satellite to study the Sun's interaction with the Earth, the federal space agency said on Monday.

The Coronas-Photon satellite, designed to study solar and global warming processes, was delivered on Monday to the Plesetsk space center in Russia's Arkhangelsk region, from where it will be launched.

A probe designer said 80% of its components and instruments were Russian-made, while the rest were contributed by various countries including Ukraine and India.

The satellite is the third of three to study the Sun from near-Earth orbit under Russia's Coronas program. Coronas-I and Coronas-F were launched in 1994 and 2001, respectively.

The Coronas program is part of Russia's Federal Space Research Program, while the Coronas-Photon project is part of the Living with a Star (LWS) international space research program.

LWS experiments aim to increase understanding of solar variability and its effects to improve predictions of space weather, which can harm spacecraft and astronauts in orbit and cause problems with radio transmissions and electric power grids on Earth.