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 22 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
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One of the principal goals of Solar Orbiter is to understand how the Sun is connected to interplanetary space. This connection takes place via the Sun’s magnetic field and the solar wind. The Sun’s magnetic field stretches through space, around Earth and the other planets, to create the heliosphere. The solar wind is the constant stream of particles that flows away from the Sun.
Solar Orbiter’s goal is to link the solar wind flowing past the spacecraft with a source region or ‘footprint’ on the Sun. This will show how and where that specific section of the wind is generated.
This movie shows the calculated source region of the solar wind that subsequently flowed past Solar Orbiter. The movie has been constructed from images taken by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument on Solar Orbiter between 17 and 21 June 2020. The green cross is the region calculated to be responsible for the solar wind that’s hitting Solar Orbiter. The movie shows how the footprint moves with time. It is notable that the footprint is always located at the edge of a region called a ‘coronal hole’, seen here as a dark patch on the surface of the Sun. A coronal hole is where the Sun’s magnetic field reaches out into space, and this allows the solar wind to flow.
Mapping of this accuracy has never been possible before and as Solar Orbiter goes closer to the Sun, so the detail will only increase.