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!
This image was captured on 21 April 2020 by the Spectral Investigation of the Coronal Environment (SPICE) instrument on ESA’s Solar Orbiter. Taken at extreme-ultraviolet wavelengths, this is the first glimpse from SPICE of data that will give us measurements of the flows of plasma, its composition and temperature in the Sun’s atmosphere, the corona, which will help us unravel the origin of the solar wind.
This image shows the distribution of emission from electrically charged carbon atoms, known as ions, for this region of the Sun’s atmosphere, where the temperatures is 50 000 K. The image was taken in the ultraviolet wavelength of 97.7 nm. The pattern is created by the underlying network of invisible magnetic fields; the bright emission is concentrated above stronger magnetic fields which heat the ions.
The first SPICE spectra are available here.
Solar Orbiter is a space mission of international collaboration between ESA and NASA.