The Solar Orbiter mission passes 50 million kilometers from the Sun this Saturday, March 26, 2022. The European Space Agency wants to take advantage of this to try to observe sunspots.
50 million kilometers separate the Solar Orbiter probe from the Sun this Saturday, March 26, 2022. The mission is inside the orbit of the planet Mercury. For the European Space Agency (ESA), this approach is a new opportunity to collect data on the star located at the heart of the solar system.
For Solar Orbiter, this is the very first close passage of the Sun, said the European Space Agency. This is called the perihelion (the Earth also passes through it): the point in the trajectory of a celestial object, where its distance from the Sun is minimum. It takes place precisely at noon for the ESA solar probe.
Solar Orbiter hunting for sunspots
The opportunity to study the star in more detail is too good. Thus, the teams responsible for the mission anticipated and began to search ” dynamic characteristics on the surface of the Sun. These include sunspots, i.e. regions that appear darker on the surface of the star. These structures have lower temperatures than their surroundings and emit less light than the rest of the solar disk. We therefore see them, by contrast, as darker areas.
It is planned to operate the 10 instruments installed on board the probe simultaneously, to obtain a maximum of data during this perihelion of March 26. The instruments being fixed on the probe, it is essential to turn Solar Orbiter with precision if one wants to hope to follow certain sunspots in particular.
You can also follow the progress of Solar Orbiter in space in real time, thanks to an interactive tool from ESA. It is possible to zoom in on the solar system, to better see where the trajectory of the probe, represented in green, passes.
