The Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) was launched on 11 February 2010, and the EUV Variability Experiment (EVE), one of the three solar instruments aboard SDO, began normal operations on 1 May 2010.

As part of the planned SDO EVE program, sounding rockets are flown regularly to provide underflight calibrations in order to more accurately track instrument degradation trends.

The principal investigator is Dr. Tom Woods from the Laboratory For Atmospheric And Space Physics, University of Colorado.

The next launch of the EVE underflight calibration sounding rocket payload is planned for June 23, 2012 at 13:00 MDT (window 13:00 - 13:30 MDT) (3:00pm EDT) from the White Sands Missile Range.

This flight's primary purpose is to provide the third underflight calibration for the SDO EVE satellite instrument.

Launch time is near local noon to minimize the atmospheric absorption of the solar EUV radiation during the rocket observations.