Spacecraft
Solar Orbiter
Takes the closest images of the Sun ever made, from inside Mercury's orbit, and pairs them with instruments sampling the solar wind where it passes - so the same event can be watched leaving the surface and then felt. Venus flybys are tilting its orbit steadily out of the ecliptic to look down on the poles, which no telescope on Earth can see.
- Agency
- ESA/NASA
- Launched
- 2020-02-10 - still working
Path
A loop round the Sun that reaches inside Mercury's orbit, 0.28 AU at its closest, about 168 days round. Venus flybys are tilting it out of the plane of the planets a little at a time, to bring the Sun's poles into view.
Along the way
- First perihelion, and the closest pictures of the Sun so far
- The last Earth flyby - from here the orbit only tilts
- Closest perihelion yet, inside Mercury's average distance
Everything the map shows is worked out in your browser from published orbital data - nothing on it is a stored picture of where things were.