Tag: Solar Orbiter
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First images from Solar Orbiter mission bring sun into sharper focus
The first images from the European-built Solar Orbiter mission are the closest ever taken of the sun, revealing previously unseen mini-flares nicknamed “campfires” that may offer hints about what makes the solar corona, or outer atmosphere, hotter than the sun’s surface. The European Space Agency-led Solar Orbiter mission, built and launched in partnership with…
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NASA and ESA Solar Stalkers mark milestones
Two intrepid spacecraft are dancing with the Sun and making great progress toward the goal of learning more about our star. After NASA announced that Parker Solar Probe (PSP) had sent the “Status A” beacon after its fifth close flyby of the Sun, the European Space Agency (ESA) has announced that its Solar Orbiter has…
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NASA and ESA Solar Stalkers mark milestones
Two intrepid spacecraft are dancing with the Sun and making great progress toward the goal of learning more about our star. After NASA announced that Parker Solar Probe (PSP) had sent the “Status A” beacon after its fifth close flyby of the Sun, the European Space Agency (ESA) has announced that its Solar Orbiter has…
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ESA science missions back in action after coronavirus-related shutdown
Artist’s concept of the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab Four of the European Space Agency’s robotic missions, including the agency’s two Mars orbiters, are resuming science operations after a stand-down triggered by the positive diagnosis of an employee at ESA’s control center in Germany with the coronavirus. ESA said Thursday that the four…
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ESA Solar Orbiter mission rides on ULA Atlas V to study the Sun
A mission years in the planning and building took its next great leap Sunday evening as the European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter blasts off on a 7-year mission to study the Sun. The probe launched atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V 411 rocket from SLC-41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, at…
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Solar Orbiter blasts off on a mission to study the sources of the sun’s power from pole to pole
The Solar Orbiter spacecraft was launched tonight to begin a seven-year, $1.5 billion mission aimed at studying the sun and its mysterious magnetic field from an unprecedented vantage point. A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket launched the two-ton, bus-sized probe from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 11:03 p.m. ET (8:03 p.m. PT) after…
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ESA’s Solar Orbiter ready to study the Sun, heading for Florida
Solar Orbiter is ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) first medium class mission with strong partnership from NASA. Part of the Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 Programme, the science platform has now completed all its European-based construction and integration tests and is ready to be shipped to its launch site at the end of October. Launch of Solar Orbiter…
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Atlas V to launch Europe’s next-generation sun explorer in 2017
United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V has been selected as the rocket of choice by NASA’s Launch Service Program to loft a next-generation sun explorer called Solar Orbiter. The first medium-class mission of the European Space Agency’s Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 program, Solar Orbiter will head uphill on the Atlas V via its Cape Canaveral SLC-41 launch complex…