The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
Go to topicThank you for liking
You have already liked this page, you can only like it once!
The image was taken with SOHO’s LASCO 3 instrument (Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph) on 27 February 2000. The shaded disc at the centre of the image is a mask in the LASCO instrument that blots out direct sunlight to allow study of the faint details in the Sun's corona. The white circle added within the disc shows the size and position of the visible Sun.
SOHO is an international collaboration between ESA and NASA. It was launched in 1995 and orbits around the Sun in step with Earth, 1.5 million km away at the L1 point. Here, the combined gravity of Earth and Sun keep SOHO in an orbit locked to the Earth–Sun line, allowing SOHO to enjoy an uninterrupted view of our daylight star.