Home - Solar Orbiter

19 February 2020First measurements by a Solar Orbiter science instrument reached the ground on Thursday 13 February providing a confirmation to the international science teams that the magnetometer on board is in good health following a successful deployment of the spacecraft’s instrument boom.

15 February 2020At 16:00 CET on Thursday, 13 February, the critical first 83 hours of Solar Orbiter’s unique mission to study our star came to an end.

11 February 2020ESA’s Solar Orbiter mission lifted off on an Atlas V 411 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 05:03 CET on 10 February on its mission to study the Sun from new perspectives.

28 January 2020How do you dress on a hot day? Knowing that Solar Orbiter will venture closer to the Sun than any previous ESA mission, it might seem odd that a spacecraft needing to endure an unprecedented level of sunlight ends up almost entirely black in colour. The reason why comes down to practicalities of thermal design, a coating treatment devised for...

28 January 2020ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft will venture just 42 million km from the Sun – about as close as it is possible to go and still be able to image our fiery parent star without having its instruments melt. Its cameras will peek through an advanced shield designed to dissipate heat while keeping the rest of the spacecraft within a protective cone of...