Scientists are enthusiastic about the launch, because so far we don’t know much about the sun. While what happens on the sun actually has consequences for our earth. And then it’s not just about the temperature.
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Kennedy Space Center
“These are exciting days, certainly”, says the Flemish Anik de Groof of the European Space Agency ESA. She is at the Kennedy Space Center. She and her colleagues are responsible for controlling the Solar Orbiter, once it has been taken out of the atmosphere with a rocket. It has been worked on for seven years, now it must happen.
If everything goes well, it will be a unique mission, De Groof says: “Cameras have never been so close to the sun to make moving images. That was not possible in the past, but now we have the technology.”
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42 million kilometers
Being close is of course relative. The sun is about 150 million kilometers from the earth. The Solar Orbiter remains at 42 million kilometers from the sun. A heat shield protects the probe against temperatures above 500 degrees Celsius. The images are made behind moveable flaps.
“The purpose of the mission is that we can better understand solar activity, what influences it has on the rest of the solar system, and of course especially on the earth,” says De Groof. Then it is mainly about the magnetically charged particles that the sun blows into space after sometimes severe gas explosions. Solar wind is called that, and sometimes, when the phenomenon is very intense, solar storm.
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These charged particles also go to earth and can cause natural phenomena such as the Northern Lights. But also for problems. For example, disruptions in radio and communication equipment. Notorious is a major power outage in Canada in 1989 that was the result of a solar storm. In short, it is good to know more about how solar storms exactly work and how they arrive on Earth.
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Magnetic fields
The sun and the north and south pole of the star have strong magnetic fields. And they sometimes change, resulting in a lot of solar wind. The Solar Orbiter will investigate that process. Scientists hope for the first time to get a good picture of the north and south pole of the sun. And, very special, from the back of the sun.
“That is unique, it has never been done. It is of course difficult to communicate with the probe when it is at the back of the sun, but we hope that it can send data. Although we always think that it is too little”, De Groof laughs.
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The Solar Orbiter from ESA is not the only mission towards the sun. NASA launched an American probe in 2018 to map the atmosphere of the sun. It even came closer to the sun. But the Solar Orbiter can focus much better on different regions of the sun. NASA and the European ESA will continue to work closely together and to compare their data.
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But first of course; the launch on Monday morning around five o’clock Dutch time. “It will be exciting. The Orbiter must then end up in the right orbit, the solar panels must unfold, just like the antennas. That must all go well. And then we can finally start,” says De Groof.
The space mission of the Solar Orbiter takes seven years. Possibly some more years to come. And that is possible. The Orbiter runs … on solar energy.
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