Photo: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI team / Courtesy
The “Solar Orbiter” space probe has reached the closest point to the Sun in its two-year journey through space. Approached 48 millions of kilometers from the Sun –less than a third of the distance between the Earth and the Sun–, as announced this Saturday by the European Space Agency ESA.
Now , the European Space Agency has published an extraordinary image obtained by the spacecraft on March 7 (larger version of maximum resolution in the link).
“One of the images, taken by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI), is the highest resolution image ever taken of the entire disk of the Sun and its outer atmosphere, the corona”, assured the ESA.
#ICYMI Zoom in and explore the incredible detail of our home star, courtesy of #SolarOrbiter @EuiTelescope 🤩 https://t.co/ 2vOYZ7aw92 #WeAreAllSolarOrbiters #ExploreFarther pic.twitter.com/MpDFZW2PJD
— ESA’s Solar Orbiter (@ESASolarOrbiter) March 27, 2022
The final result was obtained from 25 separate shots, ESA explained, when the spacecraft passed directly between the Earth and the Sun The probe was at that time halfway between Earth and our star.
NASA Parker Solar Probe Came Closer
The “Solar Orbiter” is not the spacecraft that has come closest to the Sun, since that honor corresponded last December to NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, which It reached just over five million kilometers and flew through its crown, but the big difference is that the European mission carries cameras to look at the star, said the astrophysicist from the University of Al calá (Madrid) Javier Rodríguez-Pacheco, principal investigator of the Energetic Particle Detector (EPD), one of the “Solar Orbiter” instruments.
The “Solar Orbiter” space probe
“Solar Orbiter” is a mission of about 1,500 million euros from ESA and the US space agency NASA. The 1.8-ton orbiter carries ten science instruments. Researchers hope to gain new insights into the sun and its magnetic field.
Instruments not only measure electromagnetic fields and solar particles flowing around of the space probe, but they can also observe the Sun itself from a great distance for the first time.
In June 2022, the The probe had already flown less than 77 million kilometers from the Sun and had taken images of mysterious “ bonfires” in the star. The current highly elliptical orbit of the “Solar Orbiters” will change little over the next three years: approximately every six months, the spacecraft will reach its closest point to the Sun. During the next pass, scheduled for October, the space probe will approach up to 42 millions of kilometers from the Sun.
FEW (dpa, EFE, ESA)