• Exploration Solar Orbiter, a ship to explore the unknown poles of the Sun
  • Spanish participation. Spain points to the Sun: Twenty years of dreams and hard work

While on Earth we are facing the greatest pandemic in recent decades, a spacecraft has been traveling toward the Sun. Solar Orbiter took off on February 10, just as the first cases of coronavirus were beginning to be reported in Europe, and today, after four months of technical checks, it offers the closest images of our star taken so far.

Images that, as explained this morning by those responsible for this joint mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA, have allowed us to observe a phenomenon that until now had not been seen near the surface of our star. These are countless solar mini-bursts, informally called bonfires.

These early results, says Daniel Müller, mission scientist at ESA, "have exceeded expectations." "They are only the first images and we can already see new phenomena of interest. Together, the 10 instruments of the ship offer a comprehensive view of the Sun and the solar wind , and we trust that it will help us answer far-reaching questions about Sun".

Campfires that appear in the first set of images were photographed when the spacecraft was 77 million kilometers from the sun . As explained by David Berghmans, of the Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB) and principal investigator of the Extreme Ultraviolet Image Camera (EUI) with which the photos were taken, "these bonfires are like minor relatives of the solar flares that can be observed from Earth, but between millions and billions of times smaller. " And it is that although "at first glance, the Sun may seem motionless, as soon as it is observed in detail we can appreciate these small eruptions everywhere".

Throughout the mission, they will investigate whether these bonfires are small versions of those large blazes or originate from different mechanisms . One of the hypotheses is that these mini-eruptions could contribute to one of the most enigmatic phenomena of our star: the heating of the solar corona. It is the outermost layer of the Sun's atmosphere, and despite this, it is a real hell: its temperature exceeds a million degrees while the surface of the Sun, which in theory should be warmer, is only 5,500 degrees .

The impact of the pandemic

"This mission will go down in history for being the first to be put into operation from our homes," says Javier Rodríguez-Pacheco Martín, from the University of Alcalá de Henares, one of the Spanish scientists who are part of the international Solar Orbiter team. And it is that despite the satisfaction with the first images, the scientists of this 1,500 million euro mission do not hide the concern they experienced during the coronavirus crisis and the difficulties they had to face to start the instruments from the European Space Operations Center (ESOC) in Darmstadt (Germany), where the European missions are controlled and where, as Sylvain Lodiot, head of operations of the Solar Orbiter at ESA, had a few days ago, a large number of scientists are needed on the ground for each of the teams of the 10 instruments carried by the ship.

ESA / NASA

Firstly, access to Italian scientists from Piedmont and Lombardy, the regions most affected at the start of the pandemic, was blocked for security reasons. The measurement was a setback for the mission since the German-Italian team is the one that manages the METIS chronograph, an important instrument that measures the emissions of the solar corona.

On the other hand, scientists and engineers who under normal circumstances would have traveled to the European Space Operations Center (ESOC) in Darmstadt (Germany) had to stay in their countries after decreeing the confinement of the population. In addition, ESOC's high-tech control rooms had to be abandoned in late March following the detection of several cases of coronavirus among employees. In an improvised way, it was necessary to work remotely at home, which made difficult the complex process of testing and starting up the ten instruments that the ship carries. Fortunately, during the first weeks, the most important, they were able to work more or less normally.

"We have been through distressing moments and even for a short period of time our instruments had to be turned off so that they did not suffer any unforeseen damage. However, thanks to the efforts of everyone and particularly the ESA staff at ESOC, we have managed to get everything off the ground. in time and form, "says Rodríguez-Pacheco, principal investigator of the Energy Particle Detector (EPD), one of the ship's instruments.

The scientific phase, in late 2021

Never before have images of the Sun been taken at such a short distance because, as explained during the presentation, Holly Gilbert, of NASA, the Parker spacecraft of the US space agency has come closer but did not have cameras to take this type of Photographs. During its first approach to the Sun, Solar Orbiter was located 77 million kilometers from its surface, which is approximately half the distance between Earth and the Sun. It is now 160 million kilometers from us, immersed in its phase cruising (and with its telescopes turned off) and adjusting its orbit to get the first view of the solar poles and get closer to our star. It will be then when she undertakes the scientific phase, which will begin in November 2021.

At its closest approach to our star, this spacecraft with a significant Spanish participation will be located some 42 million kilometers from the surface of the Sun, closer than the planet Mercury is.

"The greatest potential of Solar Orbiter will be reached when all of its instruments are on and we are able to correlate what telescopes observe with what instruments in situ detect around the spacecraft. This will occur at three specific periods in orbit: there will be a window during the closest approach to the Sun and two during observations from outside the plane of the ecliptic, where the Sun and the objects of the Solar System are located, so for the first time we will be able to closely observe the solar poles and at the same time detect the electromagnetic fields and charged particles that our star continuously emits ", details Javier Rodríguez-Pacheco.

SolESA / NASA surface detail

Our country's participation in the mission is also reflected in the SO / PHI instrument, which has been developed 40% by the Spanish team and which has already obtained the first autonomous magnetic map of the Sun, as José Carlos del Toro points out. Iniesta, from the Andalusian Institute of Astrophysics in Granada, and main co-researcher of the Camera of Polarimetric and Heliosemic Imaging (PHI). This instrument measures the composition and distribution of the energy particles of the Sun in the vicinity of the spacecraft. which will provide high-resolution, full-disk measurements of the solar magnetic field.

In addition to the instruments of the University of Alcalá de Henares and the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC), INTA, the Polytechnic universities of Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia, and the Institute of Astrophysics of Canary Islands. Spanish companies CASA, Sener, Rymsa (Tryo), TAS-E, Crisa and CNM have also supplied components for the ship.

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