The Sun is the closest star to us and even so, there are many mysteries that we do not know, such as the complex processes that take place within the star itself or what the Sun’s poles are like.
The Solar Orbiter mission, whose objective is to study and predict the behavior of our star, which will be dedicated to solar and heliospheric physics, was selected as the first medium-class mission of ESA’s Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 program. The joint NASA and ESA project has a total budget of about $ 1.5 billion. ESA – with its European partners – contributes about two-thirds (including nine of the spacecraft’s ten instruments) and NASA is responsible for the launch and one of the instruments.
Once the spacecraft is safely detached from the NASA-supplied Atlas V 411 rocket, it will begin a 22-minute activation sequence that will deploy solar panels and critical instrumentation.
Mission start
The Solar Orbiter’s science mission will not begin immediately, but towards the end of 2021.
The spacecraft (1,800 kilograms) together with its range of instruments, aims to answer key scientific questions about the development of planets and the emergence of life, the origins of the Universe or how the solar system works. Solar Orbiter will study the internal structure of the Sun and the internal heliosphere, the bubble created by electrically charged particles that make up the solar wind. This way we will have a better idea of the type of elements present in our star. The mission will use the technique of helioseismology to know precisely what happens inside the star.
Taking its journey into account, as the spacecraft heads toward the Sun, it will perform two gravity assist maneuvers around Venus and one around Earth, putting it on an elliptical path that will bring it closer to 42 million kilometers from the sun.
Spanish participation
The Solar Orbiter project has an important Spanish participation. In fact, it is the first time that Spanish teams are at the helm of two instruments on board a space mission (SO / PHI and EPD), co-led by the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia and the University of Alcalá, respectively. Javier Rodríguez-Pacheco and José Carlos del Toro, for example, occupy key positions of responsibility in this interesting and important mission.
Of the ten instruments carried by the spacecraft, four will be for recording data in situ around the spacecraft, and six for observing the Sun remotely.
We are eager to see what the turbulent solar surface brings us, the fascinating and hot corona or how the solar wind changes. Full science operations will begin in November 2021 ; that’s when the ship’s imagers will be on. The first approach to the Sun will take place in 2022, about a third of the distance between the Earth and the Sun.
How can everything we learn about the Sun help us thanks to Solar Orbiter?
“In this mission, as in many others, it will take years for its results to be reflected in our progress; however, the results obtained will be very interesting in terms of space weather. The Sun, its solar activity and all the energy it releases have conditioned the appearance and evolution of all the stars in the solar system for more than four billion years. This mission is going to provide a lot of information about space weather . Therefore, it will help to better understand the changes in the Earth’s climate and also to predict them. Solar activity is one of the factors that affects the temperature of our planet, an example of this is the small “ice age” that occurred from the beginning of the 14th century to the middle of the 19th century, and which began in the so-called Maunder Minimum, a 30-year period in which solar activity decreased significantly. In addition, this mission pays close attention to the solar activity at the poles of the star and it is expected that we will better understand the generation of the magnetic fields of this star, how they are generated, with what intensity, etc. All this will help us better protect our infrastructures in space and also prevent damage from solar radiation during spacewalks by astronauts, as well as those caused by long stays in space during future trips to the Moon and Mars ”, explains the Valencian astronomer Amadeo Aznar Macías, from the APT Observatory Group.
Of all the things that we are going to be able to contemplate, what is the most exciting?
“Without a doubt, being able to observe the Sun from its axis of rotation, obtain information about the solar dynamics in these solar regions, although we will have to wait until 2025 until the Solar Orbiter reaches the appropriate angle in its path . We had a previous experience in the year 2000 when the Cassini probe was able to take images of the poles of Jupiter, thanks to which we were able to generate the most detailed map of the Jovian poles so far ”, concludes Aznar.
