The perihelion, the point in each orbit closest to the Sun, shifts gradually closer with each pass. Solar Orbiter orbits around the Sun on an elliptical trajectory, completing one round every five to six months. ![]() “We have to change the orbit in space and that can be done either by performing manoeuvres by the spacecraft, which requires a lot of propellant, or by performing planetary flybys.” “The rockets we have are not powerful enough to inject the spacecraft immediately into the target orbit,” says José Luis Pellón Bailón, ESA’s Solar Orbiter Deputy Spacecraft Operations Manager. ![]() Each time Solar Orbiter makes its closest approach of the Sun, it will see it from a new perspective. In order to reach the necessary inclination, the spacecraft will follow an ever-changing path that will be continually tilted and squeezed, edging it higher and higher to give it a view of the Sun’s poles. In the case of Solar Orbiter, they will use the technique to not only tighten the probe’s orbit around the Sun, but also to raise it from the ecliptic plane. Gravity assist manoeuvres allow spacecraft operators to adjust the speed and trajectory of a spacecraft using the gravitational pull of planets (or other bodies) instead of using large amounts of fuel. In fact, Solar Orbiter will be just the second spacecraft to perform such a manoeuvre, following the NASA/ESA Ulysses mission which used a gravity assist at Jupiter to increase its inclination and make in-situ measurements above the Sun’s poles in the mid-1990s. “It requires a huge change to the spacecraft’s velocity, that is, to its energy.” “Achieving the large inclination of Solar Orbiter’s orbit is quite challenging,” says José Manuel Sánchez Pérez, Solar Orbiter mission analyst at ESA. Solar Orbiter will have to leave this plane and embark on an ‘inclined’ orbit in order to study the Sun’s polar regions, as they can only be directly observed by a spacecraft able to look at them from above or below the ecliptic. However, as a result of the physics that shaped the Solar System, Earth and the other planets orbit the Sun in roughly the same flat plane, known as the ecliptic, which doesn’t allow for a good view of the Sun’s poles. Studying the Sun’s polar regions is crucial to improve our understanding of these processes. Solar Orbiter's journey to the Sun in an animation
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