The UK-built Solar Orbiter recently left the Airbus factory in Stevenage to travel to Germany for a year of testing, ahead of its launch in 2020 from Cape Canaveral (in Florida).
The UK is at the heart of this European Space Agency (ESA) (
www.esa.int) mission to uncover the secrets of the Sun, and Solar Orbiter will travel to within 43 million km of its surface coping with temperatures of 600°C.
The spacecraft will provide close-up views of the Sun’s polar regions, tracking features such as solar storms and the solar wind that causes Earth’s atmosphere to light up as the Aurora or Northern Lights.
The north and south poles of the Sun ‘flipped’ in 2013, and Solar Orbiter will also explore this phenomenon.
The ESA selected Airbus Defence and Space as the prime contractor for this mission in 2012, and it leads a team of companies and universities all over Europe that supply various parts of the spacecraft.
The UK is a world-leader in solar physics research, and its scientists were instrumental in proposing the Solar Orbiter mission to ESA.
The UK Space Agency funded teams from University College London, Imperial College London and RALSpace to design and build three of the 10 ‘state of the art’ scientific instruments on board the spacecraft, and to contribute to a fourth.
Business Secretary Greg Clark said: “Our space sector is going from strength to strength. We have world-class scientists and a strong track record of exporting to countries all over the world.
“From sending spacecraft to the Sun to supporting new technologies here on Earth, our commitment to the European Space Agency will continue to deliver ground-breaking discoveries, highly skilled jobs and substantial economic returns to Britain.”