The spacecraft was launched yesterday from NASA's Cape Canaveral Space Center on an Atlas V launcher * It will perform two maneuvers near Venus and one near Earth, in order to exit the plane of Melaka where the planets orbit the Sun, and where most spacecraft also sail
Yesterday (February 10.2.2020, 30 according to Israel time) the Solar Orbiter spacecraft was launched into space - which will attack the sun in an orbit with a tilt of 45-XNUMX degrees from the plane of Milka. Solar Orbiter is a spacecraft led by the European Space Agency (ESA) with strong NASA participation in some of the ten instruments on board.
The spacecraft will move around the Sun in an elliptical orbit that will take it close to 42 million km from the Sun's surface, about a quarter of the distance between the Sun and the Earth. The orbit will allow Solar Orbiter to see some of the regions of the Sun that have not been observed until now, including the poles, and will shed new light on the formation process The solar wind, which affects the infrastructure on Earth. Later on Monday, the European Space Agency controllers in Darmstadt, Germany received a signal from the spacecraft indicating Because its solar collectors were successfully deployed.
In the first two days after launch, the Solar Orbiter will deploy its instrument boom and several antennas to communicate with Earth and begin collecting science data. Solar Orbiter is on a unique trajectory that will allow its comprehensive array of instruments to provide humanity with the first ever photographs of the Sun's poles. This orbit includes 22 approaches to the Sun in which it will approach the orbit of the planet Mercury and closely study the Sun and its influence on space.
"As humans, we have always known the importance of the sun to life on Earth, observing it and examining its working mechanisms in detail, but we have known for a long time that it has the potential to disrupt daily life if we are in the line of a powerful solar storm," said Günter Singer, the director. The European Space Agency's scientific... "At the end of the mission, we will know more about the hidden force responsible for the Sun's behavior and its effect on our Earth than ever before."
Solar Orbiter will spend about three months in a testing phase during which mission team members will test the spacecraft's ten scientific instruments to ensure they are working properly. Only in about two years will she reach her main scientific track.
Solar Orbiter combines two main research modes. Local instruments that will measure the environment around the spacecraft, will locate electric and magnetic fields, particles and passing waves. The remote sensing instruments will image the Sun from afar, with its atmosphere and outflow of matter, and collect data that will help scientists understand the inner workings of the Sun.
During the cruise phase of the mission, which will last until November 2021, the spacecraft's local instruments will collect scientific data about the spacecraft's environment, while the telescopes will calibrate to prepare for scientific operations near the Sun. The cruise phase includes three gravitational pushes to bring the spacecraft's orbit closer to the Sun - two on the surface of Venus in December 2020 and August 2021 and one on the surface of Earth in November 2021.
After the help of gravity from both planets, the Solar Orbiter will begin the main phase of its mission - which will lead to the first close pass by the surface of the Sun in 2022 - about a third of the distance from the Sun to Earth. Throughout its mission, the spacecraft will use Venus' gravity to bring its orbit closer to the Sun and lift off the Melaka plane.
Solar Orbiter's unique trajectory will bring the spacecraft out of the plane roughly aligned with the Sun's equator where Earth and the other planets orbit the Sun. Spacecraft launched from Earth naturally stay in this plane, which means that telescopes on Earth and telescopes on satellites have limited ability to observe the Sun's poles.
A previous NASA and ESA spacecraft, Ulysses, launched in 1990, achieved an inclined orbit that gave scientists their first measurements of space around the Sun in this critical region. Unlike Ulysses, Solar Orbiter carries cameras that will provide the first-ever images of the poles The Sun This vital information will help scientists fill in the gaps in models of the Sun's magnetic field, which drives the Sun's activity.
Combined with the other spacecraft recently launched by NASA to study the Sun, we are gaining unprecedented new knowledge about our planet," said Thomas Zurbotsen, NASA's associate director for science at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "With our European partners, we are entering to a new era of heliophysics that will transform solar exploration and help make astronauts safer as they fly Artemis program missions to the moon."
For information on the NASA website
More of the topic in Hayadan:
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The orbit of the spacecraft will not be polar towards the Sun (a polar orbit should be perpendicular to the axis of rotation) but rather an orbit that will be inclined by about 30°-45° from the plane of Milka, which will allow it to observe the polar regions of the Sun.
Khrushchev heard that Americans had landed on the moon and ordered his scientists to land on the sun. "But it's impossible, it's hot there" - "Then land at night"