Solar Orbiter
Early 2020 will see the launch of an ambitious mission to observe the poles of the Sun for the first time ever
In February 2020, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) highly anticipated Solar Orbiter will launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida on top of an Atlas V rocket. Although this mission is led by the ESA, it has had strong contributions from NASA, including the launch site and rocket. This is one of the missions that constitutes the ESA’s Cosmic Vision programme, and will investigate the only star in our Solar System, the Sun. Not only is it equipped with ten state-of-the-art instruments – designed to investigate everything from coronal mass ejections (CMEs) to the solar wind – it will also conduct the first-ever observations of the solar poles.
The cosmic generator that sits at the centre of the Solar System is not only surrounded by everything from the tiniest asteroids to gas giants several times larger than Earth, it is also heavily shrouded in mystery. One huge mystery that has had solar scientists scratching their heads for years is the
Sun’s corona. This outer region can be as much as 300-times hotter than the ‘surface’ of the Sun, called the photosphere. It is comparable to taking your hand away from a fire and feeling it heat up. It is a complete cosmic conundrum.
Unfortunately, because this ball of plasma is so powerful and unpredictable – capable of producing events that could potentially harm us on Earth, let alone a nearby spacecraft – it is very difficult to investigate up close. Several missions have tried to understand the beast, with honourable mentions to other NASA/ESA missions Ulysses and the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), but even they were not enough. There is still so much mystery surrounding the Sun’s heliosphere, the solar activity that is the driving force for solar wind and CMEs and their variability. Now the ESA is launching this new-and-improved investigator to probe the Sun in unprecedented detail.
The Solar Orbiter, which is abbreviated as ‘SolO’, will provide both remote and in-situ observations courtesy of an extremely elliptical orbit. This elliptical orbit will be created after a series of gravity-assist manoeuvres of Earth and Venus, taking the spacecraft to an aphelion – the distance at the object's farthest point – of 170 million kilometres (105 million miles) and a perihelion – its closest point – of 42 million kilometres (26 million miles).
“Not only is it equipped with state-of-theart instruments, it will also conduct the first-ever observations of the solar poles”