ESA title

Solar Orbiter is the most complex scientific laboratory ever to have been sent to our life-giving star, taking images of the Sun from closer than any spacecraft before and being the first to look at its polar regions. With Solar Orbiter's ten instruments, scientists hope to answer 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? How does solar wind form, and what accelerates it to speeds of hundreds of kilometres per second? And how does it all affect our planet?

  • Launch date: February 2020
  • First images: 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
Solar Orbiter's view of the Sun's south pole
Science & Exploration

Solar Orbiter gets world-first views of the Sun’s poles

11/06/2025 18516 views 68 likes
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Solar flare seen by Solar Orbiter
Science & Exploration

Catch solar bursts in new citizen science project

11/03/2025 9417 views 94 likes
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Solar Orbiter Venus flyby
Enabling & Support

Solar Orbiter ready for close encounter with Venus

18/02/2025 7141 views 66 likes
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The Sun's surface as seen by Solar Orbiter's PHI instrument
Science & Exploration

New full Sun views show sunspots, fields and restless plasm…

20/11/2024 105457 views 129 likes
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SOHO: 25 years of solar imaging
Science & Exploration

The solar cycle, a heartbeat of stellar energy

04/11/2024 4716 views 39 likes
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Solar Orbiter and Parker Solar Probe
Science & Exploration

Solar Orbiter shows how solar wind gets a magnetic push

29/08/2024 5920 views 66 likes
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Solar Orbiter's view of active region AR3664
Science & Exploration

Can't stop won't stop: Solar Orbiter shows the Sun raging on

18/06/2024 7812 views 43 likes
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Solar Orbiter observes an active patch of the Sun
Science & Exploration

ESA’s Solar Orbiter traces solar wind to its source

28/05/2024 7761 views 28 likes
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Solar Orbiter captures giant solar eruption
Science & Exploration

Solar Orbiter to watch for eruptions during total eclipse

04/04/2024 4184 views 36 likes
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Enabling & Support

Solar Orbiter prepared for ‘worst-case scenario’

02/04/2024 3557 views 34 likes
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Solar Orbiter and Parker Solar Probe
Science & Exploration

ESA and NASA team up to study solar wind

28/03/2024 3922 views 32 likes
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Metis observes the Sun’s corona
Science & Exploration

Solar Orbiter closes in on the solution to a 65-year-old so…

14/09/2023 13007 views 106 likes
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Science & Exploration

Camera ‘hack’ lets Solar Orbiter peer deeper into Sun’s atm…

06/09/2023 12085 views 91 likes
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Tiny jets escape the Sun
Science & Exploration

Solar Orbiter discovers tiny jets that could power the sola…

24/08/2023 12735 views 82 likes
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Science & Exploration

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

20/02/2023 24019 views 101 likes
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Zooming in on a solar switchback
Science & Exploration

Solar Orbiter solves magnetic switchback mystery

12/09/2022 41680 views 109 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 107604 views 208 likes
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Science & Exploration

The Sun as you’ve never seen it before

18/05/2022 81414 views 100 likes
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The Sun in high resolution
Science & Exploration

Zooming into the Sun with Solar Orbiter

24/03/2022 644124 views 1623 likes
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Science & Exploration

Solar Orbiter crosses the Earth-Sun line as it heads for th…

07/03/2022 18625 views 103 likes
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Science & Exploration

Giant solar eruption seen by Solar Orbiter

18/02/2022 70669 views 190 likes
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Solar Orbiter’s view of Comet Leonard in ultraviolet
Science & Exploration

Solar Orbiter catches a second comet by the tail

25/01/2022 10232 views 127 likes
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Comet Leonard by SoloHI
Science & Exploration

A Christmas comet for Solar Orbiter

21/12/2021 12038 views 136 likes
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Searching for solar jets
Science & Exploration

Solar Orbiter publishes a wealth of science results from it…

14/12/2021 6420 views 60 likes
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Solar Orbiter's Earth flyby
Science & Exploration

Solar Orbiter returns to Earth before starting its main sci…

18/11/2021 10994 views 75 likes
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Science & Exploration

Sights and sounds of a Venus flyby

13/08/2021 11010 views 52 likes
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BepiColombo and Solar Orbiter flyby – illustration
Science & Exploration

ESA gets ready for double Venus flyby

02/08/2021 39103 views 135 likes
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Science & Exploration

Solar Orbiter images first coronal mass ejections

17/05/2021 20631 views 75 likes
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Science & Exploration

‘Campfires’ offer clue to solar heating mystery

27/04/2021 8025 views 66 likes
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Science & Exploration

Solar Orbiter prepares for festive Venus flyby

17/12/2020 10543 views 83 likes
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Science & Exploration

Solar Orbiter: turning pictures into physics

10/12/2020 13271 views 66 likes
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Science & Exploration

Solar Orbiter releases first data to the public

30/09/2020 15753 views 65 likes
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Solar Orbiter
Science & Exploration

The closest camera to the Sun

07/09/2020 9230 views 44 likes
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Solar Orbiter at perihelion – 26 March 2022
Science & Exploration

Secrets for Solar Orbiter to solve

04/09/2020 4220 views 20 likes
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Solar Orbiter
Science & Exploration

Why we need Solar Orbiter

02/09/2020 4334 views 16 likes
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Solar Orbiter’s first view of the Sun
Science & Exploration

Solar Orbiter’s first images reveal ‘campfires’ on the Sun

16/07/2020 100846 views 194 likes
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Solar Orbiter’s first views of the Sun
Science & Exploration

Solar Orbiter's first views of the Sun: image gallery

16/07/2020 164037 views 333 likes
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Science & Exploration

Watch Solar Orbiter first image release

14/07/2020 21851 views 95 likes
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Solar Orbiter's instruments
Science & Exploration

Solar Orbiter ready for science despite COVID-19 setbacks

29/06/2020 8788 views 69 likes
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Science & Exploration

Solar Orbiter makes first close approach to the Sun

15/06/2020 40377 views 222 likes
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Hubble observation of Comet ATLAS on 23 April 2020
Science & Exploration

Solar Orbiter to pass through the tails of Comet ATLAS

29/05/2020 13090 views 90 likes
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Science & Exploration

Where is Solar Orbiter? Track ESA’s Sun explorer

28/05/2020 44403 views 312 likes
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Perspective view of Korolev crater
Enabling & Support

Space missions return to science

02/04/2020 8114 views 78 likes
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The inner Solar System
Science & Exploration

ESA scales down science mission operations amid pandemic

24/03/2020 9670 views 62 likes
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Magnetic field measurements during Solar Orbiter boom deployment
Science & Exploration

First Solar Orbiter instrument sends measurements

17/02/2020 9275 views 60 likes
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Solar Orbiter boom and antenna deployments
Enabling & Support

Solar Orbiter braves challenging early days

14/02/2020 9499 views 144 likes
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Science & Exploration

Liftoff for Solar Orbiter, ESA’s mission to face the Sun up…

10/02/2020 11657 views 57 likes
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Solar Orbiter
Enabling & Support

Here comes the Sun!

07/02/2020 4340 views 28 likes
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Solar Orbiter launch - fairing separation
Science & Exploration

Watch Solar Orbiter launch live

06/02/2020 18229 views 61 likes
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Science & Exploration

Call for Media: Solar Orbiter launch to face the Sun

31/01/2020 5278 views 8 likes
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