ASO-S Mission: Inflight Performance and First Results

Abstract

China's first comprehensive solar physics mission, the Advanced Space-based Solar Observatory (ASO-S), was successfully launched on 9 October 2022. The mission focuses on exploring the connections between the solar magnetic field, solar flares, and coronal mass ejections (CMEs). ASO-S carries three instruments: the Full-disk solar vector MagnetoGraph (FMG), the solar Hard X-ray Imager (HXI), and the Lyman-alpha Solar Telescope (LST). The unique combination of these payloads allows simultaneous observations of the vector magnetic field of the full Sun, high-energy imaging spectroscopy of solar flares, and formation and evolution of CMEs on the disk and in the inner corona. This topical collection, along with other publications, provides an overview of ASO-S's achievements over the first one and a half years, including mission validation, payload calibration, data flow description, analysis software demonstration, and numerous investigations based on ASO-S observed data. We hope this collection will be valuable for researchers seeking to understand the mission or utilize the data.