UK to build Solar Orbiter (SolO), a spacecraft that will travel closer to the Sun where no one has gone before

 UK to build Solar Orbiter (SolO), a spacecraft that  will travel closer to the Sun where no one has gone before

 Solar Oribter is a joint venture between Esa and the US space agency (Nasa). The latter will supply two instruments and the rocket to send the satellite on its way.

The European Space Agency has signed a contract with Astrium UK to build the Solar Orbiter (SolO) satellite for a launch in 2017.

Contract value is 300m euros (£245m).


Solar Orbiter will take itself deep into the inner Solar System, flying as close as 42 million km from the Sun.

It will require the spacecraft to carry a robust heatshield, the Sun-facing side of which will experience temperatures approaching 600 degrees.

SolO's remote sensing instruments - its imagers and telescopes - will look though slots which have shutters that can be closed when no observations are being made.

Solar Orbiter will be close enough to the Sun to directly sample the solar wind just after it has been ejected from the solar surface, and it has five in-situ instruments for the purpose.

The mission is designed to enhance  understanding of how the Sun influences its environment, and in particular how it generates and accelerates the flow of charged particles in which the planets are bathed.

The probe's orbit will also take it high above the plane of the planets so it can see some of the processes at play on the Sun poles. And the speed of SolO around the star means it will be able to follow events and features that would normally rotate out of view of Earth-based observatories.

Source – BBC

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Friday, April 27, 2012

Tags – Solar Space craft