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The U.S. space agency NASA on Thursday launched a new observatory for studying the complex mechanisms of functioning of the sun.

The Solar Dynamics Observatory Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) was launched based aerospace Cape Canaveral on the Atlantic coast of Florida at 10:23 hours in the eastern United States (15h23 GMT), said NASA in a statement.

The SDO is presented as the spacecraft’s most advanced ever known to study the sun and the dynamics of its behavior.

It is intended for a scientific mission of five years and has enough fuel for five years of additional operation. The total project cost SDO would amount to 856 million, according to the information available.

According to NASA, the SDO should provide more complete scientific information, better and faster than any other unit of the agency is currently studying the sun and its operation.

It expects this new observatory better understanding the inner workings of the sun, thanks to images taken in continuous and high resolution data collected on the interior of the sun, and activity measurements of its magnetic field that provide.

The SDO will take images of the sun every 0.75 seconds and send every day to land near 1, 5 terabyte of data, the equivalent of 380 full movie streaming.

“The SDO will be a great leap forward in our understanding of the sun and its effects on human life,” he said in a statement Richard Fisher, Director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters.

The observatory data will help researchers predict solar storms and other forms of solar activity may affect the spacecraft in orbit, astronauts from the International Space Station and other electronic systems or on earth, “said NASA.