Initially, the first Radio and Plasma Waves (RPW) antenna is deployed. This is a critical and risky part of the mission's lifetime, and the teams will need to be prepared for every eventuality.įigure 4: Visualization showing the deployment of various boom/antennas on the Solar Orbiter spacecraft. To ensure Solar Orbiter's safety as best they can, teams at ESA/ESOC mission control are currently rehearsing the Launch and Early Orbit Phase (LEOP) of the spacecraft's mission, during which time the spacecraft ‘wakes up' and solar panels and instrument booms are deployed. Reaching this orbit, and safeguarding the spacecraft from the intense heat and radiation as it carries out its scientific mission, will require tricky operations back on Earth. With the help of gravitational assists from Earth and Venus, and a series of chemical thruster burns, the spacecraft will reach a unique high-inclination orbit that will allow it to take the first pictures of the Sun's poles. The B-roll also contains newly re-digitized ESA archive material.įigure 3: Solar Orbiter will fly in a series of complex orbits to get into operational orbit, altered by gravitational assist maneuvers using Venus and Earth (image credit: ESA) The B roll contains new cleanroom footage showing the early stages of integration of Solar Orbiter into the upper stage of the Atlas V launcher. The A and B roll features ESA's archive material tracing the agency's past missions to the Sun. Since the launch of Ulysses in 1990, the agency has led or cooperated on several Sun-exploring missions including SOHO, the Cluster quartet and PROBA-2. ESA has a long history of studying the Sun from space. The cutting-edge spacecraft will get as close as 42 million kilometers away from the Sun, about a quarter of the distance between the Sun and Earth, and face scorching temperatures of up to 500✬. February 3, 2020: ESA's new Sun-explorer, Solar Orbiter, will capture close-up images of never before seen regions of our parent star, including the poles, and study the electromagnetic environment in its vicinity.Figure 1: ESA's Solar Orbiter spacecraft being encapsulated into the fairing of the US Atlas V 411 rocket at the Astrotech payload processing facility near Kennedy Space Center in Florida ahead of the launch on 21 January 2020 (image credit: ESA–S.
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