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A new space mission will carry telescopes closer to the sun than ever, capturing detailed images of its surface landscapes and taking measurements of its atmosphere.
Once at the destination – the orbit of the sun – the spacecraft will be able to study the origins of the solar wind – the flow of ionized gas emanating from the sun – and the violent explosions on its surface called solar flares , as well as taking pictures of the polar regions of the sun for the first time.
The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter will be launched in February 2020 from a Nasa rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and it will take about three and a half years to reach its point of view, about one fifth of the Earth. Before arriving there, he must first go to Venus, then head for the Earth, before falling very close to the sun and adjust his position until he 39, it reaches a distance of about 42 million kilometers.
On August 12, NASA's Parker solar probe began a similar perilous journey to the sun, aiming to reach 7 million kilometers from its surface, but it does not have the capacity to collect images provided by the Solar Orbiter.
"More [previous] missions were more focused on sampling the environment around the spacecraft or on the surface of the sample. This is done in a way that has not been done before, "said Michelle Sprake, System Engineer at Airbus Defense and Space in the UK, who has been working on Solar Orbiter for eight years.
The seven-year mission, which costs about 1 billion euros, aims to achieve 20 overflights of the sun. To do this, Solar Orbiter will have to withstand a wide temperature range, from 600 ° C near the sun to -180 ° C in the deepest spaces. "It's one of the toughest missions we've ever done," said Justin Byrne, Airbus Chief Scientist.
Solar Orbiter will help scientists understand and predict the effects of solar wind and large solar flares on communications and navigation systems on Earth.
"The fundamental scientific question we're trying to answer is how the sun creates this plasma bubble around us and how solar activity evolves over time and changes that bubble we all live in," he said. Daniel Müller, Solar Orbiter Project Scientist
Although on Earth we are continually "shaken by the solar wind," a big solar storm can affect spacecraft, satellites, and the accuracy of GPS signals, said Louise Harra, professor of solar physics at UCL Mullard Space Science. Laboratory and part of the Solar Orbiter project. "It would not affect you and me when we use our satnavs," she said, but it could affect someone using high-precision GPS, for example in oil drilling. Similarly, during a solar storm, planes are not allowed to use GPS signals and must be rerouted.
Solar Orbiter is "a piece of the puzzle" to try to understand and predict these events with a little more precision, so that we can determine if we are going to be affected by these events, said Sprake.
Mission scientists hope to understand what drives the sun's magnetic field and its 11-year activity cycle. Being able to study the poles will be central to all of this, Harra said. At the moment, "because we do not know what's at the poles, we're missing a lot of the situation," she said.
"We've never had telescopes to look down and measure the magnetic field at the poles, to see what structures are. We believe that it will not only be a dark darkness. There will be interesting phenomena there. And this global magnetic field is the engine of solar activity and solar wind, "she told the Guardian.
The spacecraft is equipped with 21 sensors and 10 instruments that look at the sun and the environment, as well as a 3.1m x 2.4m protective heat shield consisting of several layers of insulated materials designed to reflect as much heat as possible.
"The job of the spacecraft is to deliver a precious cargo of 10 instruments near the sun," said Ian Walters, director of the Solar Orbiter project at Airbus. The instruments are so sensitive that the spacecraft must be completely clean, he said. The cleaning process consisted of cooking each unit on the spacecraft and subjecting it to a dry nitrogen purge.
Now that all instruments have been installed and tested at Airbus facilities in Stevenage, UK, engineers are packing spacecraft into thermal blankets before sending them to IAGB facilities in Munich. .
The Solar Orbiter launch window is scheduled for February 6-24, 2020, Walters said. "This three-week window is determined by the geometry of the Earth and Venus. We will not miss it, "he added.
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