Solar Orbiter

Solar Orbiter is ESA's mission to investigate the Sun. Our special interest is to learn about the properties of the solar wind close to its source. To investigate these, we will build parts of the electronics of the Radio and Plasma Wave instrument (RPW) necessary for measuring electric fields and plasma density fluctuations.

Solar Orbiter was launched in February 2020 and will be operating at least until 2027.

Solar Orbiter concept sketch (© Astrium). The yellow square is the heat shield necessary to fend off the solar heat. Two of the RPW antennas can be seen pointing down while the third points up from the spacecraft body.

Data

• IRF Summary Plots - easy to use overview plots showing essential fields and particle data
• RWP Summary Plots - daily plots from various RWP subsystems
• Solar Orbiter Archive (SOAR) - public Solar Orbiter data, including the plasma density (L3 RPW-BIA-DENSITY), electric field (L3 RPW-BIA-EFIELD), and spacecraft potential (L3 RPW-BIA-SCPOT) products provided by the IRF/BIAS tram.
• Solar Orbiter data availability at SOAR

More Information

• Solar Orbiter home at ESA
• Solar Orbiter home at NASA