The Iris mission - science investigation

The Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) is a NASA Small Explorer Mission (SMEX) launched on 27 June 2013 with the goal to discover how the outer atmosphere of the Sun is energized. It is designed to accomplish this by combining IRIS´s on-orbit imaging and spectral measurements with simultaneous observations from the JAXA /ISAS HINODE and NASA SDO missions. These observations when combined with a new generation of sophisticated computer models using code developed by an international team, will allow, for the first time, the determination of the physical processes responsible for the activity in the outer solar atmosphere that result from the transfer of energy from turbulent convection to non-thermal energy release in the chromosphere and corona. The IRIS is a collaboration of Lockheed Martin Advance Technology Center(LMATC) and Space and Electronic Systems(LM S&ES), the University of Montana (UM), the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), NASA Ames Research Center (AMES), the University of Oslo (UIO), and the Norwegian Space Center (NSC). Here we outline the IRIS and the ground and space supporting observations as well as comparisons of the observations with numerical simulations of both images and spectra.