Solar Orbiter offers first glimpse of the Sun’s poles in breakthrough mission
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Solar Orbiter captures breakthrough images of sun’s south pole
- The European Space Agency (ESA) has released the first-ever images of the sun's south pole, captured by the Solar Orbiter spacecraft.
- The images, taken in March from roughly 40 million miles away, were obtained during a period of maximum solar activity and used three of Solar Orbiter's onboard instruments.
- Solar Orbiter, launched in 2020 in collaboration with NASA, tilted its trajectory using a Venus flyby to gain a view from 17 degrees below the sun's equator, with future flybys set to increase this angle.
- Scientists are using Solar Orbiter to study the sun's magnetic field, activity cycle, and solar wind, aiming to improve predictions of the solar cycle and its effects on Earth.
- Unlike the Ulysses spacecraft, which flew over the solar poles in the 1990s but lacked optical instruments, Solar Orbiter can image the sun.