Category: Science

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The US Atlas V 411 rocket with ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft inside rolled out ahead of launch at Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Saturday 8 February 2020.

Solar Orbiter is an ESA-led space mission with strong NASA participation to study the Sun, its outer atmosphere and what drives the dynamic outflow of solar wind that affects Earth. The spacecraft will observe the Sun’s atmosphere up close with high spatial resolution telescopes and compare these observations with measurements taken in the environment directly surrounding the spacecraft – together creating a detailed picture of how the Sun affects the space environment around Earth and further out in the Solar System.

Thanks to its unique — and difficult to achieve — orbit, Solar Orbiter will also provide the first-ever pictures of the Sun’s polar regions, offering key insights into the poorly-understood magnetic environment there, which helps drive the Sun’s 11-year solar cycle and its periodic outpouring of solar storms. Solar Orbiter relies on a combination of 10 instruments, built throughout Europe and in the US. The instruments, combining both remote-sensing observations and in situ measurements, were carefully chosen and designed so as to support and amplify each other’s observations, together providing the single, most comprehensive and integrated view of the Sun and its environment ever achieved.

More about Solar Orbiter

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Image of HD 70843, the star chosen as the first target for Cheops, ESA’s Characterising ExOPlanet Satellite. The star, located around 150 light years away in the constellation of Cancer, is visible at the centre of the image, surrounded by fainter stars in the background.

The peculiar shape of the stars in the image is a result of the deliberate defocusing of the Cheops optics, which spreads the light from each star over many pixels. This makes the measurements of the starlight more precise, as they are much less sensitive to small differences in the response of individual pixels in the CCD and to variations in the telescope pointing. The triangular appearance of the stars is a known effect of the three struts that support the telescope’s primary mirror.

The image covers about 1000 x 1000 pixels, with each pixel edge representing a tiny angle of about 0.0003 degrees on the sky, equivalent to less than one thousandth of the full Moon’s diameter. The inset in the lower right corner shows a region covering about 100 x 100 pixels, centred on the target star.

Launched on 18 December 2019, Cheops is ESA’s first mission dedicated to the study of exoplanets.

More about Cheops

ESA’s exoplanet-observer Cheops acquired the first image of its initial target star, following the successful telescope cover opening on 29 January 2020. The intentionally blurry image is a product of the specially designed telescope optics, which are deliberately defocused to maximise the precision of Cheops’ measurements and enable its unprecedented study of exoplanets, or planets in other solar systems.

A grand synthesis of Rosetta data has shown how its target comet repeatedly changed colour during the two years it was watched by the spacecraft. The chameleon comet’s nucleus became progressively less red as it made its close pass around the Sun, and then red again as it returned to deep space.

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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 during launch preparations on 20 January 2020.

Solar Orbiter is an ESA-led space mission with strong NASA participation to study the Sun, its outer atmosphere and what drives the dynamic outflow of solar wind that affects Earth. The spacecraft will observe the Sun’s atmosphere up close with high spatial resolution telescopes and compare these observations with measurements taken in the environment directly surrounding the spacecraft – together creating a detailed picture of how the Sun affects the space environment around Earth and further out in the Solar System.

Thanks to its unique — and difficult to achieve — orbit, Solar Orbiter will also provide the first-ever pictures of the Sun’s polar regions, offering key insights into the poorly-understood magnetic environment there, which helps drive the Sun’s 11-year solar cycle and its periodic outpouring of solar storms. Solar Orbiter relies on a combination of 10 instruments, built throughout Europe and in the US. The instruments, combining both remote-sensing observations and in situ measurements, were carefully chosen and designed so as to support and amplify each other’s observations, together providing the single, most comprehensive and integrated view of the Sun and its environment ever achieved.

More about Solar Orbiter

Image:

ESA’s new Sun-observing spacecraft Solar Orbiter inside the fairing of the US Atlas V 411 rocket at the Astrotech payload processing facility near Kennedy Space Center in Florida during launch preparations on 21 January 2020.

Solar Orbiter is an ESA-led space mission with strong NASA participation to study the Sun, its outer atmosphere and what drives the dynamic outflow of solar wind that affects Earth. The spacecraft will observe the Sun’s atmosphere up close with high spatial resolution telescopes and compare these observations with measurements taken in the environment directly surrounding the spacecraft – together creating a detailed picture of how the Sun affects the space environment around Earth and further out in the Solar System.

Thanks to its unique — and difficult to achieve — orbit, Solar Orbiter will also provide the first-ever pictures of the Sun’s polar regions, offering key insights into the poorly-understood magnetic environment there, which helps drive the Sun’s 11-year solar cycle and its periodic outpouring of solar storms. Solar Orbiter relies on a combination of 10 instruments, built throughout Europe and in the US. The instruments, combining both remote-sensing observations and in situ measurements, were carefully chosen and designed so as to support and amplify each other’s observations, together providing the single, most comprehensive and integrated view of the Sun and its environment ever achieved.

More about Solar Orbiter

Image:

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.

Solar Orbiter is an ESA-led space mission with strong NASA participation to study the Sun, its outer atmosphere and what drives the dynamic outflow of solar wind that affects Earth. The spacecraft will observe the Sun’s atmosphere up close with high spatial resolution telescopes and compare these observations with measurements taken in the environment directly surrounding the spacecraft – together creating a detailed picture of how the Sun affects the space environment around Earth and further out in the Solar System.

Thanks to its unique — and difficult to achieve — orbit, Solar Orbiter will also provide the first-ever pictures of the Sun’s polar regions, offering key insights into the poorly-understood magnetic environment there, which helps drive the Sun’s 11-year solar cycle and its periodic outpouring of solar storms. Solar Orbiter relies on a combination of 10 instruments, built throughout Europe and in the US. The instruments, combining both remote-sensing observations and in situ measurements, were carefully chosen and designed so as to support and amplify each other’s observations, together providing the single, most comprehensive and integrated view of the Sun and its environment ever achieved.

More about Solar Orbiter

Video:
00:03:15

ESA’s Solar Orbiter is getting ready for its launch on an Atlas V rocket provided by NASA and operated by United Launch Alliance from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Once in space, and over the course of several years, the spacecraft will repeatedly use the gravity of Venus and Earth to raise its orbit above the poles of the Sun, providing new perspectives on our star, including the first images of the Sun’s polar regions.

All these operations will be controlled from the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC), Germany, where a dedicated team is currently working on simulations of the first moments in orbit, after separation from the launcher, but also all the delicate manoeuvres of the journey that will make Solar Orbiter mission possible.

The film contains soundbites by Sylvain Lodiot, Spacecraft Operations Manager, Solar Orbiter (English A-roll, French B-roll); and José Manuel Sánchez Pérez, Mission Analyst, Solar Orbiter (English A-roll, English and Spanish B-roll).

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00:02:27

ESA’s Solar Orbiter mission takes a closer look at the Sun than any European satellite before. The sophisticated probe, carrying ten instruments for imaging the surface of our star and measuring the properties of the environment in its vicinity, can be seen in this animation going through parts of the launch and activation sequence. Lofted to space by an Atlas V rocket, Solar Orbiter deploys its 18 m-long solar array (as measured from tip-to-tip), as well as a set of antennas and an instrument boom, as it embarks on its cruise towards the Sun. The spacecraft takes advantage of the gravitational force of Venus and Earth to adjust its trajectory, which will place it into an elliptical orbit around the Sun. Solar Orbiter will get as close as 42 million kilometres to the Sun, about one-quarter of the distance between the Sun and Earth. The orbit will allow Solar Orbiter to see some of the never-before-imaged regions of the Sun, including the poles. Solar Orbiter’s instruments peek at the star through tiny windows in a 30 cm thick titanium foil shield, which protects the spacecraft against the scorching temperatures and constant bombardment by highly charged particles of the solar wind.

Solar Orbiter is an ESA mission with strong NASA participation. Launch is scheduled for February 2020 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, US.

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00:03:14

This timelapse video shows the preparations for the launch of ESA’s Cheops, the Characterising Exoplanet Satellite, at Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The video spans about three weeks, starting on 28 November 2019 and ending on 18 December with the liftoff.

Over this period, the fully integrated and fuelled spacecraft was fitted inside the flight adapter of the Soyuz-Fregat rocket, encapsulated within the half-shells of the transport module, transferred to the final integration building, and installed on top of the Fregat upper stage of the Soyuz launcher. The upper composite, enveloped by the rocket fairing and comprises the Fregat and all passengers – the ASI Cosmo-SkyMed Second Generation satellite, Cheops, and three CubeSats: ESA’s OPS-SAT and CNES’s EYE-SAT and ANGELS satellites – was eventually transferred to the launch pad area and hoisted on top of the three-stage rocket ahead of liftoff.

Cheops is ESA’s first mission dedicated to the study of extrasolar planets, or exoplanets. It will observe bright stars that are already known to host planets, measuring minuscule brightness changes due to the planet’s transit across the star’s disc.

More about Cheops

Six weeks after the launch of Cheops, ESA’s Characterising Exoplanet Satellite, the telescope cover was opened as part of the mission’s in-orbit commissioning.

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Artist’s impression of Solar Orbiter following launch, with solar arrays and antennas deployed.

Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA. Its mission is to perform unprecedented close-up observations of the Sun and from high-latitudes, providing the first images of the uncharted polar regions of the Sun, and investigating the Sun-Earth connection. It is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA in February 2020.

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Artist’s impression of Solar Orbiter following separation from the Centaur upper stage of the Atlas V 411 rocket launching the mission into space.

Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA. Its mission is to perform unprecedented close-up observations of the Sun and from high latitudes, providing the first images of the uncharted polar regions of the Sun, and investigating the Sun-Earth connection. It is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA in February 2020.