The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter spacecraft returns first-ever data of the Sun collected from a 17-degree tilted orbit.

The magnetic field drives the formation of sunspots, cooler regions on the solar surface that appear as dark blotches. At the ...

Also, data from the ESA mission's first full "pole-to-pole" orbit of the sun, which began in February 2025, will not arrive at Earth until October 2025. "This is just the first step of Solar ...

Escaping the ecliptic plane takes some doing, by which I mean a lot of very expensive rocket fuel. The Solar Orbiter used Venus's gravity to help pull it out of the usual equatorial orbit around ...

Until now. In March, a spacecraft captured the first-ever clear images of the sun's south pole, which the European Space Agency released Wednesday, June 11. “We reveal humankind’s first-ever ...

Leaving the ecliptic is a costly, fuel-expensive maneuver for spacecraft, but it’s where Solar Orbiter excels: By the end of the mission, the spacecraft’s orbit will be tilted 33 degrees with ...

ESA has now released the first pictures of the sun’s south pole, taken between March, when the spacecraft was orbiting at an angle 15 degrees below the ecliptic plane, and today, when it reached ...

Solar Orbiter used momentum from its flyby of Venus on February 18 to push itself out of the ecliptic plane that contains Earth’s orbit around the Sun. Around a month later, the spacecraft was ...

The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter, in collaboration with NASA, has captured unprecedented images of the Sun's south pole from 40 million miles ...

Solar Orbiter captures 1st images of sun's south pole 5 years after Florida launch The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter, which launched in 2020 from Cape Canaveral, got a historic look at the ...

At any rate, that flat-on angle prevented us from seeing either pole. Escaping the ecliptic plane takes some doing, by which I mean a lot of very expensive rocket fuel.