Science, SOHO and People March 1996 - June 1998.

SOHO started taking images of the Sun on 4th January 1996 when the Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) took its first picture (shown left). Up until its loss on 24th June 1998 it had been working continuously and extremely well, providing scientists from all over the world with their best ever view of the Sun.

SOHO cost about 1 billion dollars and was designed to do science for two years. Every second of those two years it was designed for costs about 16 American dollars (at the time of writing 1 pound is the same as about 1.60 dollars) or about 10 pounds.

	How many dollars can you get for 1 pound today? Where would you find out how many dollars you can get for 1 pound? If you wanted to buy one second of time on SOHO, how much would you have to pay?

Scientists need to eat and so they need to get paid. So the actual cost of doing science with SOHO is much more than a billion dollars.

A lot of the people (see the 'On the Hot Spot' link) who've written something for these pages have used SOHO to do the science they want to do. Click on Sun Block Adventures to have a look at what they've done. Can you find out how many people have used SOHO?

Million Mile Rescue Launching Into Orbit Science, SOHO and People Now you see it, now you don't A Needle in a Haystack The Longest Lifeline Ever Back from the dead NOT the end of the story!