Solar Orbiter Mission

🔹 About:

1. NASA has launched the Solar Orbiter to space on an Atlas 5 rocket from Florida

2. It is a cooperative mission between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA)

3. It a seven-year mission.

🔹 Features:

1. It will provide images of the sun’s north and south poles using a suite of six instruments on board.

2. It will come within 26 million miles of the sun. 

3. It is made of a custom titanium heat shield coated in calcium phosphate.

🔹 Solar Flares:

1. A large explosion of magnetic energy in the Sun’s atmosphere 

2. Occurs in active regions around sunspots. 

3. It releases bursts of energetic particles that enhance the solar wind that constantly emanates from the star into the surrounding space. 

4. It has the ability to disrupt telecommunication networks and power grids on the ground & cause magnetic storms.

🔹 Corona:

1. The outermost layer of the Sun’s atmosphere with temperature is more than a million degrees Celsius