ESA title

Solar Orbiter is the most complex scientific laboratory ever to have been sent to the Sun. Although our life-giving star has been an object of scientific interest for centuries, its behaviour still presents a puzzle for scientists. Solar Orbiter will take images of the Sun from closer than any spacecraft before and for the first time look at its uncharted polar regions. By combining observations from Solar Orbiter’s six remote-sensing instruments and four sets of in situ instruments, scientists hope to find answers to some profound questions: What drives the Sun’s 11-year cycle of rising and subsiding magnetic activity? What heats up the upper layer of its atmosphere, the corona, to millions of degrees Celsius? What drives the generation of the solar wind? What accelerates the solar wind to speeds of hundreds of kilometres per second? And how does it all affect our planet?

Launch date: February 2020

Completed milestones: First images released in July 2020

Beginning of routine science operations: November 2021

Mission highlights: The closest ever images of the Sun, the first ever close-up images of the Sun’s polar regions, measuring the composition of the solar wind and linking it to its area of origin on the Sun’s surface.

The closest distance to the Sun: 42 million kilometres.

Solar Orbiter

Latest

Science & Exploration

Mercury’s black disc helps sharpen Solar Orbiter’s view

20/02/2023 21114 views 96 likes
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Zooming in on a solar switchback
Science & Exploration

Solar Orbiter solves magnetic switchback mystery

12/09/2022 38692 views 103 likes
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SOHO captures coronal mass ejection blasting from the Sun's far side in the direction of Venus
Enabling & Support

Coronal mass ejection hits Solar Orbiter before Venus flyby

05/09/2022 105312 views 205 likes
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Science & Exploration

The Sun as you’ve never seen it before

18/05/2022 76974 views 97 likes
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The Sun in high resolution
Science & Exploration

Zooming into the Sun with Solar Orbiter

24/03/2022 596153 views 1516 likes
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    Solar Orbiter: Answering the big questions

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    22/01/2020 2678 views 18 likes
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    Solar Orbiter: journey around the Sun

    27/01/2020 8252 views 68 likes
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    Extreme exploration with Solar Orbiter and Parker Solar Probe

    22/01/2020 2721 views 16 likes
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About Solar Orbiter