display
Darmstadt (dpa) - In the vast expanses of the solar system, just past Venus: on its mission to the sun on Sunday, the “Solar Orbiter” probe is to fly very close to the neighboring planet on Earth.
At 11.39 a.m. and 20 seconds (CET) it will be only 7448 kilometers from Venus, according to the European space agency Esa.
"The probe is slowed down and the path is changed to be able to take a look at the poles of the sun," said the head of the Esa mission operations in the control center in Darmstadt, Simon Plum, of the German press agency.
"It's all bagged up."
In the control center, however, only a small team will watch the flyby due to the corona pandemic.
A lot of things run from home.
"It is a scenario with the greatest possible distance."
The mission of Esa and the US space agency NASA, costing around 1.5 billion euros, was launched in February from Cape Canaveral in the US state of Florida.
It should bring new knowledge about our home star, which is around 150 million kilometers away.
There are ten scientific instruments on board the 1.8 ton shear orbiter.
Researchers hope to gain new knowledge about the sun and the magnetic field, which drives everything else such as solar storms or eruptions and thus also has an impact on our home planet.
display
“Solar Orbiter” is said to fly up to 42 million kilometers from the sun.
In order to be protected from temperatures of several hundred degrees, the probe has a titanium heat shield.
The first images of the orbiter from a distance of 77 million kilometers were presented in July.
According to experts, no mission to take pictures of the star has been this close.
Esa to the Solar Orbiter