The launch of Solar Orbiter, an ESA mission to explore the Sun in unprecedented detail, is now planned to take place in October 2018. The launch was previously targeted for July 2017. Read more
Solar Orbiter and Solar Probe Plus: Getting ready for the mission to Hell
They must be the two most audacious space missions currently in development. Solar Orbiter and Solar Probe Plus will venture inside the orbit of Mercury to study the Sun. Read more
ESA's Solar Orbiter mission has undergone its latest major test: its protective shield has been subjected to concentrated sunlight to prove it can cope with the fierce temperatures close in to our parent star. A 'structural-thermal' version of the craft's sunshield was recently exposed to an artificial Sun for two weeks in Europe's largest vacuum chamber at ESA's Technical Centre in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. Read more
NASA Awards Launch Services Contract for Solar Orbiter Mission
NASA has selected United Launch Services LLC of Centennial, Colo., to launch the Solar Orbiter Collaboration mission to study the sun in July 2017. The Solar Orbiter will launch on an Atlas V 411 rocket from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. Read more
Prehistoric cave pigment to shield ESA's solar probe
A pigment once daubed onto prehistoric cave paintings is set to protect ESA's Solar Orbiter mission from the Sun's close-up glare. Burnt bone charcoal will be applied to the spacecrafts titanium heatshield using a novel technique. Solar Orbiter, due for launch in 2017, will carry a portfolio of instruments to perform high-resolution imaging of our parent star from as close as 42 million km - a little more than a quarter of the distance to Earth. Read more
British industry will lead the production of Solar Orbiter (SolO), a spacecraft that will travel closer to the Sun than any satellite to date. SolO will take pictures and measurements from inside the orbit of Mercury, to gain new insights on what drives the star's dynamic behaviour. The European Space Agency has signed a contract with Astrium UK to build the satellite, for a launch in 2017. Read more
ESA has awarded the contract to build its next-generation Sun explorer to Astrium UK. Solar Orbiter will investigate how the Sun creates and controls the heliosphere, the extended atmosphere of the Sun. Prof. Alvaro Giménez Cañete, ESA Director of Science and Robotic Exploration and Miranda Mills, National Director - Earth Observation, Navigation and Science of Astrium signed the contract on 26 April on the occasion of a ceremony celebrating 50 years of the UK in space. Read more
Scientists in Potsdam are preparing for the start of ESA's "Solar Orbiter" mission
On 4 October 2011 the European Space Agency (ESA) has selected the Solar Orbiter mission for implementation. This spacecraft will investigate how the Sun influences its environment with the launch date planned for 2017. The Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) contributes with instrumentation for this mission. AIP scientists and engineers are designing the imager, a 55 cm long telescope tube, for the remote sensing X-ray telescope STIX ("Spectrometer/Telescope for Imaging X-rays"). STIX is built by a collaboration of institutes from France, Poland, Czech Republic, Ireland, Austria, and Italy, led by Switzerland. The AIP is the only German institute in the STIX team. Read more
UCL is heavily involved in the design of a proposed space mission to study the Sun in unprecedented detail. If selected for development by the European Space Agency (ESA), Solar Orbiter will travel closer to the Sun than any previous spacecraft. The data it collects could provide major breakthroughs in our understanding of how the inner Solar System works and is driven by solar activity. Read more
UK Space Agency to explore the Universe with Cosmic Vision
The UK Space Agency has awarded £3.65M to help UK scientists prepare for three new space missions designed to unlock the secrets of the Sun; seek out distant planets that could harbour life; and search for dark energy - the elusive constituent thought to make up 74% of the mass-energy in the Universe. The missions - Euclid, PLATO and Solar Orbiter - are part of ESA's Cosmic Vision programme and have been selected from more than 50 original ideas to go forward for detailed technical and cost assessments. In June 2011, ESA will decide which two of the three missions to build and launch between 2017 and 2020. The UK Space Agency helps fund the European Space Agency's highly successful series of space science missions - which include Mars Express and the Herschel space telescope - through its subscription to the ESA club. Read more