8/8/2023 0 Comments Solar orbiter launch date![]() ![]() Solar Orbiter crossed the orbit of Mercury on March 14 and will pass back through it on April 6 as it moves farther from the Sun again. Now that the flyby is complete, Solar Orbiter scientists from ESA and NASA will spend weeks scouring over and analyzing these data and images.ĭuring the March 26 flyby, Solar Orbiter made its closest approach yet at 48 million kilometers from the Sun’s surface – less than one-third of the distance between the Sun and the Earth. ![]() See AlsoĪs Solar Orbiter made its close approach to the Sun, all ten of its instruments were operating and collecting valuable data on the Sun’s characteristics. The ten instruments aboard Solar Orbiter are the Energetic Particle Detector (EPD), Magnetometer (MAG), Radio and Plasma Waves (RPW), Solar Wind Plasma Analyser (SWA), Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI), Coronagraph (Metis), Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI), Heliospheric Imager (SoloHI), Spectral Imaging of the Coronal Environment (SPICE), and X-ray Spectrometer/Telescope (STIX). During this first perihelion, Solar Orbiter teams tested each of the spacecraft’s ten instruments, imaging the Sun and collecting a plethora of data on the Sun’s unique processes At the time of this first close pass, Solar Orbiter’s perihelion was only 77 million kilometers, around the halfway point between the Sun and Earth. On June 15, 2020, Solar Orbiter made its first close pass of the Sun. During its primary mission, Solar Orbiter’s orbital inclination will increase from 0° to 24°. Additionally, these gravity assist maneuvers help raise the inclination of Solar Orbiter’s orbit, allowing the spacecraft to provide the first views of the Sun’s uncharted polar regions. In order to lower its perihelion - the point in its orbit closest to the Sun - Solar Orbiter needs to perform several gravity assists with Earth and Venus to achieve a targeted perihelion of 0.28 AU. Since being released by the rocket’s Centaur upper stage, Solar Orbiter has been traveling through interplanetary space in a heliocentric orbit. Solar Orbiter launched on February 9, 2020, atop a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket. The flyby brought Solar Orbiter less than one-third of the distance from the Sun to the Earth. On March 26, 2022, the joint European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft successfully completed its first close pass through the Sun’s corona, bringing the spacecraft’s specially-designed collection of instruments closer to the Sun than ever before.ĭuring the close pass, called perihelion, all ten of Solar Orbiter’s instruments operated simultaneously, working together to gather important, never-before-seen data. ![]()
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