ORLANDO, Fla. — On Sunday night, a $1.5 billion spacecraft is scheduled take off from the Space Coast on a years-long journey that, if successful, will take the first-ever images of the Sun’s poles.
It’s data that scientists have been yearning to obtain for years, and it may answer crucial questions about the nature of our Sun and, chiefly, the charged solar particles it spews and their impact across the solar system. The mission will send the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter on a seven-year journey and help heliophysicists gain a better understanding of the dark spots believed to be on the Sun’s poles. The mission will work in conjunction with NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, which also launched from the Space Coast in August 2018
Solar Orbiter’s launch is set for Sunday evening from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station launch complex 41 on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. ULA will have a two-hour launch window that opens at 11:03 p.m. to takeoff. And the weather is looking good, with an 80% chance of favorable conditions, according to the 45th Weather Squadron.
Scientists have been aware of solar wind, the charged particles released by our star, and Sun spots for decades, but “there are still basic mysteries about our sun that remain unsolved,” said Yannis Zouganelis, the European Space Agency’s deputy project scientist for Solar Orbiter. “We have questions that we don’t know how to answer.”
Ten instruments on the Solar Orbiter will work to collect data on solar wind, solar eruptions and other solar activity. And, unlike Parker Solar Probe, the nearly 4,000-pound spacecraft is equipped with a suite of instruments that will let it capture the closest images of the Sun ever taken. Parker and Solar Orbiter will collect data on the Sun from different points, both with the hope of better understanding the outermost part of the Sun’s atmosphere known as the corona.
Solar Orbiter’s full science operations are expected to begin in November of 2021, and the orbiter is scheduled to arrive at the sun, where it will orbit at a distance of 26 million miles, in 2027.
