Solar Orbiter gets world-first views of the Sun's poles

https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Solar_Orbiter/Solar_Orbiter_gets_world-first_views_of_the_Sun_s_poles

273•sohkamyung•8mo ago

Comments

superkuh•7mo ago

This slightly tilted view of the poles is a teaser. I didn't know they'd managed to incorporate late in the mission gravity assists into the cheaper plan B to slightly tweak out of the ecliptic while dropping close to the sun. That's pretty cool. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Animatio...

But we could've had so much more. The original proposal A for the ESA Solar Orbiter was a highly inclined orbit relative to the ecliptic plane to truly get full polar views of the sun. But this was too expensive. So they went with the cheaper proposal B which was mostly just a spectroscopic platform. Similar to SDO AIA, except in a solar orbit (almost completely within the ecliptic plane) instead of SDO AIA's Earth based sun synchronous orbit.

hcarvalhoalves•7mo ago

I suppose it takes a lot of deltaV to get a stable orbit over the sun poles?

ChocolateGod•7mo ago

You'd need to completely cancel out the rotation of the solar system, far beyond what we have the technology to do.

perihelions•7mo ago

It's doable with gravity assists. Ulysses got up to 79° inclination using a Jupiter flyby.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_(spacecraft)

sandworm101•7mo ago

It does, but most of the needed dV is harvested from the planets during gravity assists. The probe is accelerated/turned several hundred or thousand m/s and in exchange the planets it passes are shifted/slowed/turned by maybe 0.00000000000000000000001 m/s. In this case, the probe largely needs to slow down, to bleed of the speed it got from being at earth's orbit, so the planets are probably being accelerated.

BurningFrog•7mo ago

They plan to get a more polar orbit each time they get close to Venus: https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2020/01/Solar_Orbi...

Not sure if 33° angle in 2029 is the final "polarity" or if they'll keep tilting after that.

widforss•7mo ago

Wouldn't the tilt affect the gravity assist of Venus?

zamadatix•7mo ago

The planning of sure, you've gotta make sure you're crossing the plane at the time, but gravity assist itself is otherwise the same though.

widforss•7mo ago

At the time, every time, and the position of Venus changes with every orbit. But I guess the folks at ESA are proficient in math.

NooneAtAll3•7mo ago

you linked Parker probe, not Solar Orbiter

jbjorge•7mo ago

"But in the end, it doesn't even matter"

superkuh•7mo ago

Huh, yeah, I am not entirely sure how that happened. I think copy buffer hijinks. How embarassing. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/23/Animatio...

sandworm101•7mo ago

Dambit. No hexagons. I think i might have lost an old bet.

tickerticker•7mo ago

LOL

svachalek•7mo ago

Ha. I wonder what solar scientists were expecting here, how surprising would it have been if the sun did have polygonal storms like the gas giants?

bravesoul2•7mo ago

From a simulation? NVidia had come a long way since you made the bet.

sandworm101•7mo ago

No. From the realwold cyclonic storms of Saturn and Jupiter that form unnatural-looking polygons at their poles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn%27s_hexagon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter%27s_South_Pole

bravesoul2•7mo ago

That is fascinating. Next bet is if Saturn's hexagon will change into another n-agon in our lifetime. Obviously we'd need a probe to check.

lostlogin•7mo ago

‘World First’ is a poor choice of words. ‘First Ever’?

riffraff•7mo ago

well, they are the first time they're seen on this world so I think it's fine.

throwaway81523•7mo ago

There was a previous mission (Ulysses aka International Solar Polar mission) that sent back a lot of data but for whatever reason, they didn't have it send visual images. Big bright ball = no surprise, maybe.

lionkor•7mo ago

It's our world's first -- maybe the others already got it.

Or better, "humanity's first".

bravesoul2•7mo ago

Happened outside our world though!

colordrops•7mo ago

I love this, seems so minor if not paying attention but it's absolutely mind blowing. Getting a view we never saw of the life giver, an object that used to be revered as a god, nearly every human alive I history has basked in it's light and heat, and the for the first time we are seeing it in full

ahmedfromtunis•7mo ago

I didn't even realize that we've never seen the sun's poles before as I just assumed we already scanned our star many times over.

A nice reminder of how patchy and limited our knowledge is despite the impression of the opposite.

Keep up the great work, humans!

wtcactus•7mo ago

This allegation is incorrect.

The Ulysses spacecraft had already did that in 1994-1995.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses_(spacecraft)

Ringz•7mo ago

The article points out:

„The only exception to this is the ESA/NASA Ulysses mission (1990–2009), which flew over the Sun's poles but did not carry any imaging instruments. Solar Orbiter's observations will complement Ulysses’ by observing the poles for the first time with telescopes, in addition to a full suite of in-situ sensors, while flying much closer to the Sun. Additionally, Solar Orbiter will monitor changes at the poles throughout the solar cycle.“

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Solar Orbiter gets world-first views of the Sun's poles

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