Spacecraft on way to orbit sun will take risky path past Earth

A SPACECRAFT destined to orbit the sun and study how the star works will this weekend undergo a high-risk flyby of Earth through a patch of space littered with debris.

The mission launched in February 2020 and will use Earth’s gravity to adjust course before heading off towards Venus, where it will use the planet’s gravity to propel it towards the sun.

And while the upcoming manoeuvre will place the spacecraft, which was partly built by British scientists, on to the correct orbit for its science phase to begin, it will also put it in the path of detritus from previous missions.

At closest approach, it will be around 460km above our planet – in the Low Earth Orbit zone. This is where the International Space Station and other spacecraft can be found, as well as debris.

The presence of the space junk means there is a small risk the solar orbiter may collide with it but the journey to this region is not without danger either.

The spacecraft will fly through another well-used orbital region, called Geostationary orbit, which again is congested with space debris and other satellites.

The European Space Agency said it will closely monitor the situation and perform collision avoidance manoeuvres if necessary.

The flyby offers a unique opportunity for science – it can collect data on the Earth’s magnetic field, which can be compared with that from ESA’S Cluster and Swarm missions to give a more detailed, three-dimensional description of this changeable region around the Earth.

After the flyby, Venus gravity assists will bring the spacecraft higher over the Sun’s never-before-seen poles, providing new details about how activity on the Sun generates space weather.