The European Space Agency (ESA), with the help of the NASA space agency, has succeeded in getting the spacecraft to take pictures at a modest 77 million kilometers distance, which is half the distance between the sun and the earth.
Solar Orbiter was launched in February and the hope is that it will be able to make measurements to provide more information about the sun. But already now it has provided new information, namely that the surface of the sun is covered by small flames that the researchers have chosen to call "campfires".
- The first images exceed our expectations, says Daniel Müller, researcher on the Solar Orbiter project at ESA, in a statement.