Launched in February 2020, Solar Orbiter is the most complex scientific laboratory ever sent to the Sun.
Solar Orbiter has ten scientific instruments: six remote-sensing instruments and four sets of in situ instruments. The remote sensing instruments look at the Sun and its extended atmosphere, the corona. The in-situ instruments measure the particles around the spacecraft, which have been released by the Sun and are known as the solar wind, along with its magnetic and electric fields.
Recent results from Solar Orbiter show that the mission is making the first direct connections between events at the solar surface and what’s happening in interplanetary space around the spacecraft. It is also giving us new insights into solar ‘campfires,” space weather, and disintegrating comets.