NSN Webinar: Solar Orbiter: A joint ESA/NASA mission to investigate the heliosphere

Dr. Teresa Nieves-Chinchilla of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center joined the NASA Night Sky Network on July 23, 2020 and shared an update on the Solar Orbiter mission.

Solar Orbiter is the latest mission to study the Sun. The mission will address a central question of heliophysics: How does the sun create and control the giant bubble of magnetic fields around it, the heliosphere?

Solar Orbiter combines remote sensing and in-situ measurements of the Sun, the solar wind plasma, fields, waves, and energetic particles from new vantage points – both close to the Sun and at high latitude -- to observe solar processes that are still relatively pristine and have not had their properties modified by subsequent transport and propagation processes. Solar Orbiter will reach unprecedented milestones in our field. The inclined orbit will allow Solar Orbiter to better image the regions around the Sun’s poles than ever before.