It will climb 24 degrees above the ecliptic for a vista of the poles and the far side of the Sun. Over the next seven years, Solar Orbiter will travel as close as 26 million miles to the Sun - closing about two-thirds the distance from Earth to the star. In solving these mysteries, scientists seek to better understand how the Sun shapes space weather, the conditions in space that can impact astronauts, satellites, and everyday technology like radio and GPS. “We still don’t understand fundamental things about our star.”Ĭredits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Joy Ngĭownload this video in HD formats from NASA Goddard’s Scientific Visualization Studio “These questions are not new,” said Yannis Zouganelis, ESA deputy project scientist at the European Space Astronomy Centre in Madrid. What drives the solar wind, the gust of charged particles constantly blowing from the Sun? Or, what churning deep inside the Sun generates its magnetic field? How does the Sun’s magnetic field shape the heliosphere, the vast bubble of space dominated by our star? There, Solar Orbiter will try to answer basic questions about the Sun, whose every burp and breeze holds sway over the solar system. Slinging past Earth and repeatedly around Venus, the spacecraft will draw near the Sun and climb higher above the ecliptic until it has a bird’s eye view of the poles. Seeking a view of the Sun’s north and south poles, Solar Orbiter will journey out of the ecliptic plane - the belt of space, roughly aligned with the Sun’s equator, through which the planets orbit. The two-ton spacecraft launches from Cape Canaveral on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. 9, 2020, during a two-hour launch window that opens at 11:03 p.m. The mission, a collaboration between ESA (the European Space Agency) and NASA, is scheduled to begin Feb. It will be a dark winter’s night when Solar Orbiter launches from Florida on its journey to the source of all light on Earth, the Sun. 7’s pre-launch science briefing at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

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