US-European Solar Orbiter spacecraft makes Venus Flyby uniindia.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from uniindia.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
US-European Solar Orbiter spacecraft makes its first Venus flyby IANS
The spacecraft’s closest approach to Venus took place at 12.39 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) Sunday.
“First #VenusFlyby completed for #SolarOrbiter,” the official Twitter handle of the spacecraft tweeted.
A partnership between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), the probe was launched in February to study the Sun.
Its mission is to perform unprecedented close-up observations of the Sun and from high-latitudes, providing the first images of the uncharted polar regions of the Sun, and investigating the Sun-Earth connection.
The Solar Orbiter’s path around the Sun has been chosen to be “in resonance” with Venus, which means that it will return to the planet’s vicinity every few orbits and can again use the planet’s gravity to alter or tilt its orbit, the ESA said.