Engineers and technicians have positioned Solar Orbiter in its rightful place atop a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket ahead of its launch in a little more than a week.
The spacecraft’s stated mission is to examine how the Sun creates and controls the space environment throughout our solar system.
#SolarOrbiter is resting serenely atop Mighty Atlas
— Tory Bruno (@torybruno) January 31, 2020
Built at ULA’s 1.6 million square foot Decatur plant, the Atlas V rocket will accelerate Solar Orbiter to 27,000 mph as it makes its way to the inner solar system. The spacecraft will then reside in an elliptical orbit and make a close approach of the Sun every six months, going within 26 million miles of the star’s surface.
As part of a joint mission between NASA and the European Space Agency, Solar Orbiter will spend the next decade gathering new information about the Sun.
This is the second mission in as many years that ULA has powered to the Sun. In 2018, one of its Alabama-built Delta IV Heavy rockets launched the Parker Solar Probe. That historic mission saw yet another milestone this week when the probe passed within 11 million miles of the Sun. No spacecraft had ever flown that close before.
Launch of Solar Orbiter is scheduled for a two-hour window beginning at 11:03 p.m. EST on February 9 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
Tim Howe is an owner of Yellowhammer Multimedia
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