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On 18 February 2025, Solar Orbiter completed a successful Venus Gravity Assist Maneuver, bringing the mission to its high latitude science phase.

News and Highlights

Science nugget: Improved Insights from the Suprathermal Ion Spectrograph on Solar Orbiter

13 November 2024 Energetic ions and electrons accelerated at the Sun can be directly injected into interplanetary space through magnetic “interchange” reconnection between a closed coronal loop and an open magnetic field line. Half a century ago, these transient events, most often associated with impulsive X-ray flares, were observed to produce extreme... read more

The solar cycle, a heartbeat of stellar energy

4 November 2024 The Sun follows a roughly 11-year rhythm of waking up and becoming very active before calming down again, a stellar beat known as the solar cycle. This affects Earth because it shapes space weather, determining how much radiation, magnetic field and particles the Sun flings out into space and towards our planet. read more

Science nugget: Temporally resolved Type III solar radio bursts in the frequency range 3-13 MHz

30 October 2024 The Sun is one of the strongest radio sources in the sky producing several kinds of radio emissions differing in characteristics, intensity and mechanism of production. Type III radio bursts are the most common coherent radio emission produced by the Sun. They are characterized by a rapid drift in time towards lower frequencies and represent an... read more

Science nugget: Resolving proton and alpha beams for improved understanding of plasma kinetics: SWA-PAS observations

23 October 2024 A crucial step in unraveling the mechanisms behind wave-particle interactions, which drive the heating and acceleration of solar wind particles, lies in the detailed analysis of the non-Maxwellian characteristics of the particle velocity distribution function (VDF). Features such as temperature anisotropies and particle beams offer critical... read more

Turbulence in the Sun’s corona

26 September 2024 Solar wind is a never-ending stream of charged particles coming from the Sun. Rather than a constant breeze, this wind is rather gusty. As solar wind particles travel through space, they interact with the Sun's variable magnetic field, creating chaotic and fluctuating motion known as turbulence. read more

Science nugget: All microflares that accelerate electrons to high-energies are rooted in sunspots

25 September 2024 The acceleration of particles through the explosive release of magnetic energy is a ubiquitous phenomenon in plasmas throughout the Universe. Solar flares provide a unique laboratory for studying these processes. HXRs are considered the smoking guns of flare-accelerated electrons, serving as crucial diagnostic tools. They enable, among others,... read more

Science nugget: Connecting Solar Orbiter and L1 measurements of mesoscale solar wind structures to their coronal source using the Adapt-WSA model

25 September 2024 Mesoscale structures are important tracers of solar wind formation because they retain signatures of their heating at their low coronal source, their release, and their acceleration through the high corona. A key observable to investigate the formation of mesoscale structures is the plasma's heavy ion composition and charge states. Solar... read more

Science nugget: Modelling the global structure of a coronal mass ejection observed by Solar Orbiter and Parker Solar Probe

18 September 2024 Reconstructing the global structure of coronal mass ejections is not a straightforward task: as CMEs propagate through the heliosphere, they may undergo many processes that can lead to fundamental alterations or deformations of their structure. To truly understand the global structure of ICMEs and their evolution as they propagate through the... read more

Solar Orbiter shows how solar wind gets a magnetic push

29 August 2024 ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft has provided crucial data to answer the decades-long question of where the energy comes from to heat and accelerate the solar wind. Working in tandem with NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, Solar Orbiter reveals that the energy needed to help power this outflow is coming from large fluctuations in the Sun’s magnetic field. read more

Science nugget: Coordinated observations with the Swedish 1m Solar Telescope and Solar Orbiter

28 August 2024 The coordinated observations with Solar Orbiter took place in the period from October 12th to October 24th, 2023. Due to local seeing conditions and daily solar elevation in October, the observations were scheduled at 9 UT over 11 days in total. The weather conditions permitted observations on 7 of those 11 days. On 4 of these 7 days the seeing... read more

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Upcoming Events

19 - 23 January 2026: ISRO - ESA Heliophysics workshop on Aditya-L1, Solar Orbiter and Proba-3

16-20 March 2026: Solar Orbiter Workshop #10 in Berlin, Germany

3-8 May 2026: EGU General Assembly, Vienna, Austria. (Solar Orbiter session has been proposed)

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