(AP) -- The most advanced solar observatory ever built rocketed
into space Thursday on a five-year quest to shed light on
Earth's star. It was NASA's second launch in four days. On
Monday, Endeavour blasted off to the International Space
Station. The shuttle-station complex was orbiting over the
Atlantic, near Africa, when the observatory shot into a cloudy
wintry sky aboard an unmanned rocket, a day late. At a cost of
$856 million, the Solar Dynamics Observatory is the first
mission in NASA's Living with a Star program. Scientists want to
better understand the violent activity on the sun that
influences life on Earth. This so-called space weather can
disrupt communications, knock out power and disable satellites,
and endanger astronauts in orbit. The spacecraft, nicknamed SDO,
is designed to transmit unprecedented reams of data from an
extremely high Earth orbit. It should send back 150 million bits
of data every second of every day, more than any other NASA
Mission. That's equivalent to downloading 500,000