The Hinode Mission

The Solar-B satellite was launched in the morning of 23 September 2006 (06:36 Japan time) by the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (ISAS/JAXA) and was renamed to Hinode (‘sunrise’ in Japanese). Hinode carries three - struments; the X-ray telescope (XRT) the EUV imaging spectrometer (EIS) and the solar optical telescope (SOT). These instruments were developed by ISAS/JAXA in cooperation with the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan as domestic partner and NASA and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (UK) as international partners. ESA and N- wegian Space Center have been providing a downlink station. All the data taken with Hinode are open to everyone since May 2007. This volume combines the ?rst set of instrumental papers of the Hinode mission (the mission overview EIS XRT and the database system) published in volume 243 Number 1 (June 2007) and the second set of papers (four papers on SOT and one paper on XRT) published in Volume 249 Number 2 (June 2008). Another SOT paper cited as Tarbell et al. (2008) in these papers will appear later in Solar Physics.