The European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft rocketed into space on a historic mission to provide humanity with the first-ever images of the sun’s elusive poles, the US space agency said.

The $1.5 billion spacecraft was launched aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on February 9.

On February 10, mission controllers at the European Space Operations Centre in Germany received a signal from the spacecraft indicating that its solar panels had successfully deployed.

In the initial days after launch, Solar Orbiter will deploy its instrument boom and several antennas that will communicate with the Earth and gather scientific data, according to NASA.

Solar Orbiter is on a unique trajectory that will allow its comprehensive set of instruments to provide humanity with the first-ever images of the sun’s poles. This trajectory includes 22 close approaches to the sun, bringing the spacecraft within the orbit of Mercury to study the sun, and its influence on space.

A previous ESA-NASA mission, Ulysses, launched in 1990, achieved an inclined orbit, giving scientists their first measurements of the space around the sun in this critical region. Unlike Ulysses, Solar Orbiter carries cameras that will provide the first-ever images of the sun’s poles.

What are the objectives of the mission?

Solar Orbiter’s primary mission of examining the sun’s polar regions will help researchers understand the origins of solar wind, a soup of charged particles highly concentrated at the two poles, which blast through our solar system, affecting satellites and electronics on Earth.

The mission is also expected to glean insight into how astronauts can be protected from radiation in space, which can damage DNA.

Solar Orbiter carries 10 instruments packed behind a massive 147 kg heat shield, three of which will peer through tiny windows to survey how the sun’s surface changes over time.

Like Earth’s own North and South Poles, the sun’s poles are extreme regions quite different from the rest of the sun. They are covered in coronal holes, cooler stretches where the fast solar wind comes gushing from. There, scientists hope to find the footprints of knotted magnetic fields underlying solar activity. Many think the poles hold the first clues to the intensity of the next solar cycle, which comes roughly every 11 years, as the sun swings from seasons of high to low activity.

“As humans, we have always been familiar with the importance of the sun to life on Earth, observing it and investigating how it works in detail, but we have also long known it has the potential to disrupt everyday life should we be in the firing line of a powerful solar storm,” said Gunther Hasinger, ESA director of Science.

“By the end of our Solar Orbiter mission, we will know more about the hidden force responsible for the sun’s changing behaviour and its influence on our home planet than ever before,” Hasinger said.

How close will it get to the sun?

Over the next seven years, Solar Orbiter will travel as close as 42 million km to the sun - closing about two-thirds the distance from Earth to the star. It will climb 24 degrees above the ecliptic for a vista of the poles and the far side of the sun.

Because Earth orbits through the ecliptic plane, we don’t get a good view of the poles from afar. It’s a bit like trying to glimpse Mt Everest’s summit from the base of the mountain. Crucially, the poles are still missing from space weather models that scientists use to forecast solar activity.

The minivan-sized spacecraft will deploy solar panels and antennas before carrying on towards the sun, a trek assisted by the gravitational forces of Earth and Venus.

How will it beat the heat?

Enabling its scorching voyage is a heat shield sporting a black coating of calcium phosphate, a charcoal-like powder similar to pigments used in cave paintings tens of thousands of years ago. All but one of the spacecraft’s telescopes peer through holes in the heat shield. At closest approach, the front of the shield will near 538 degrees Celsius, while the instruments tucked behind it will remain at a comfortable range - for them - between -20 and 50 degrees Celsius.

How will the study be conducted?

The Solar Orbiter is like a lab in orbit, designed to study the sun and its outbursts in great detail.

Solar Orbiter will spend about three months in its commissioning phase, during which the mission team will run checks on the spacecraft’s scientific instruments to ensure they are working properly.

It will take Solar Orbiter about two years to reach its primary science orbit.

Solar Orbiter combines two main modes of study. In-situ instruments will measure the environment around the spacecraft, detecting such things as electric and magnetic fields, and passing particles and waves.

The remote-sensing instruments will image the sun from afar, along with its atmosphere and its outflow of material, collecting data that will help scientists understand the sun’s inner workings.

During the mission’s cruise phase, which lasts until November 2021, the spacecraft’s instruments will gather scientific data about the environment around the spacecraft.

The remote-sensing telescopes will focus on calibration to prepare for science operations near the sun, NASA said.

The cruise phase includes three gravity assists that Solar Orbiter will use to draw its orbit closer to the sun: two past Venus in December 2020 and August 2021, and one past Earth in November 2021, it said.

Following its Earth gravity assist, Solar Orbiter will begin the primary phase of its mission - leading up to its first close pass by the sun in 2022.

Throughout its mission, Solar Orbiter will use successive Venus gravity assists to draw its orbit closer to the sun, and lift it out of the ecliptic plane.

Solar Orbiter’s unique orbit will bring the spacecraft out of the plane that roughly aligns with the sun’s equator where Earth and the other planets orbit.

Spacecraft launched from the Earth naturally stay in this plane, which means that telescopes on the Earth and those on satellites have limited views of the sun’s north and south poles.

This vital information, NASA said, will help scientists fill in the gaps in models of the sun’s magnetic field, which drives the sun’s activity.

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