Solar Physics Space Research in the Czech Republic

Solar physics has a long tradition in the Czech Republic (Czechoslovakia before 1993), which began shortly after World War II. Ground-based observations in optical, and also in radio regions, made at the Ondrejov Observatory during the 1950s and 1960s gained international reputation. Acceptance of an offer to participate in space observations within the (then) Soviet Intercosmos program was a logical extension, commencing at the end of the 1960s. This short survey of the following space activities describes briefly many projects where Czechoslovak instrumentation was used for X-ray observations of the Sun. Later on, when the Czech Republic was created from Czechoslovakia and the Intercosmos program vanished, new contacts with U.S. scientists enabled the continuation of some solar space observations from a U.S. satellite. Even though the Czech Republic's economic and industrial reconstruction after 1990 led to a partial freeze in space activities, developments in this century have turned in a promising direction and the Czech Republic became a new European Space Agency (ESA) member in 2008. Now, the country is involved in the ESA science program and participates in the ambitious Solar Orbiter project.