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Solar Orbiter

Overview

Solar Orbiter is designed to identify the origins and causes of the solar wind, the heliospheric magnetic field, the solar energetic particles, the transient interplanetary disturbances, and the Sun's magnetic field.

RAL Space involvement

RAL Space leads an international consortium that designed, developed and calibrated an Extreme Ultraviolet Spectrometer, SPICE (Spectral Investigation of the Coronal Environment). The RAL Space team will also be involved in the post-launch operations of SPICE.

Launch Date

February 2020

Focus

Solar and space physics

Partners

ESA, IAS (France), MPS (Germany), PMOD (Switzerland), NASA GSFC (USA), SwRI (USA), ITA (University of Oslo)

Illustration of a satellite in front of the sun.

Spectral Investigation of the Coronal Environment (SPICE)

RAL Space led the development of the SPICE extreme‑ultraviolet spectrometer, working with an international consortium from concept to operations. SPICE delivers vital diagnostics of the Sun’s atmosphere. The two EUV wavelength bands, 70.4 – 79.0 nm and 97.3 – 104.9 nm, observed by SPICE are dominated by emission lines from a wide range of ionized atoms of H, C, O, N, Ne, S, Mg, Si, and Fe, formed in the Sun’s atmosphere at temperatures from 10 thousand to 10 million Kelvin. SPICE measures spectral line intensities, temperatures, electron density, plasma velocities along the line of sight and elemental composition.

The SPICE project continues RAL Space’s long heritage in solar spectroscopy, including its previous Principal Investigator role on the SOHO Coronal Diagnostic Spectrometer (1995 – 2014).

Several people standing around a large flight case.

Read mission news and updates

Solar Orbiter’s Groundbreaking New View of the Sun’s Poles

Solar Orbiter, the European Space Agency-led mission with RAL Space involvement, is the first spacecraft to image the Sun’s polar regions from outside the ecliptic plane.

Studying the Sun: 5 years of Solar Orbiter

Launched on 10 February 2020, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Solar Orbiter mission has brought scientists closer to the Sun than any mission before. RAL Space is celebrating 5 years...

First images from Solar Orbiter’s SPICE instrument revealed

ESA’s historic Solar Orbiter mission has released its first and closest ever images of the Sun from a distance of just over 77 million kilometres.

We have telemetry! SPICE successfully switched on

Two weeks after launch, the SPICE instrument on board ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft was turned on for the first time on Monday 24th February. The first signals from the instrument...

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