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- Chandrayaan-3 mission: NASA’s LRO ‘pings’ Vikram Lander with laser instrument | Oneindia News Oneindia News
- NASA Spacecraft ‘Pings’ India’s Chandrayaan-3 Lander On Moon, Know Significance Jagran Josh
- ISRO’s Chandrayaan-3 Comes Back To Life; Watch How It Will Guide Astronauts Landing On Moon Hindustan Times
Tag Archives: Orbiter
Orbiter captures image of a bear’s face on Mars
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As a NASA orbiter turned its camera to the Martian surface, the face of a bear seemed to be looking back.
A camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, called the High Resolution Imaging Experiment, or HiRISE, captured an image of the unusual geological feature in December.
A circular fracture pattern on the Martian surface shapes the head, while two craters resemble eyes. A V-shaped collapse structure creates the illusion of the nose of a bear.
The circular fracture might be due to the settling of a deposit on top of a buried impact crater that had been filled in with lava or mud. The noselike feature is possibly a volcanic vent or a mud vent.
The University of Arizona, which developed the camera with Ball Aerospace, shared the image on January 25.
The photo is reminiscent of another celestial “face” glimpsed by a NASA space observatory in October 2022, when the sun appeared to smile due to dark spots called coronal holes.
And last March, the Curiosity rover spotted a rock formation that resembled a flower on Mars.
The HiRISE camera has been taking images of Mars since 2006, when the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter began circling the red planet. The powerful camera was designed to capture detailed images of the Martian surface, including features as small as 3 feet (1 meter).
The orbiter circles Mars every 112 minutes, flying from about 160 miles (255 kilometers) above the south pole to 200 miles (320 kilometers) over the north pole.
The spacecraft and its suite of instruments help NASA scientists study the Martian atmosphere, weather and climate, and how they change over time. The orbiter searches for evidence of water, ice and complex terrain and scouts future landing sites for other missions.
Most recently, the orbiter returned stunning images of what winter looks like on Mars.
China’s Tianwen-1 Mars orbiter and rover appear to be in trouble
HELSINKI — The two spacecraft making up China’s first interplanetary mission are both suffering issues, with the rover potentially lost on the surface after winter hibernation.
The Zhurong Mars rover has been hibernating on the Martian surface since May 18 last year and was expected to resume activity in December, around the time of the Spring equinox in the northern hemisphere.
However no announcement of establishing contact with the rover has been made. The South China Morning Post reported Jan. 7, citing sources that do not wish to be named, that teams on Earth have yet to receive a signal from Zhurong.
The Zhurong rover landed in Mars’s Utopia Planitia region in May 2021 but entered a period of hibernation to ride out winter, when both temperatures and solar radiation levels are too low for the solar-powered rover to operate.
The rover was expected to autonomously resume activities once it can generate sufficient energy from solar power and when temperatures reach around minus 15 degrees Celsius.
Zhurong entered hibernation when local temperatures were around minus 20 degrees, according to the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program, after the autumn equinox in late February. Conditions should already by more favorable following the Spring equinox on Dec. 26. Mars has an axial tilt of around 25 degrees, meaning it has has similar seasonal variations to Earth during its orbit around the sun.
While there has so far been no official comment, the rover may have been impacted by sand storms in the area, which could reduce the levels of energy generation. The Tianwen-1 orbiter noted storms around the landing area in March and April 2021.
Zhurong has active means of removing dust from its four butterfly wing solar arrays, but would be unable to perform this operation while hibernating. The arrays also have an anti-dust coating and can tilt to maximize light collection.
Zhurong had a primary mission lifetime of three Earth months but operated for just over one Earth year in Utopia Planitia, traveling at least 1,921 meters south from its landing site. It was seeking out geomorphologic targets such as mud volcanoes during its extended mission.
The rover has returned detailed insights into the local layered subsurface with its ground-penetrating radar and discovered evidence of relatively recent aqueous activity in the area. The rover landing was also used by NASA Administrator Bill Nelson as a warning to Congress as to China’s competitive threat to American leadership in human spaceflight.
Meanwhile, Zhurong continues its journey and has covered 1,921 metres since landing in May 2021. However, with winter in the northern hemisphere, Zhurong is receiving less solar energy and is adapting accordingly to constraints. New image below from NaTeCam pic.twitter.com/z6oJCw43DX
— Andrew Jones (@AJ_FI) May 6, 2022
Meanwhile the Tianwen-1 orbiter has been tasked with assessing the area and attempting to contact the rover. Teams are however also having trouble receiving data from the orbiter, according to SCMP.
Radio amateurs have also noted issues with attempts for ground stations to lock onto the orbiter.
#TIANWEN1 ground station seems to have given up as the spacecraft passes the Doppler reversal and is rapidly approaching periareion. The distinct difference in the rapidly changing curve and the slower strong curve suggests to me the g/s is expecting the s/c in a different orbit. pic.twitter.com/9UtiO9GfrD
— Scott Tilley (@coastal8049) January 9, 2023
Tianwen-1 was scheduled to conduct aerobraking tests late last year as part of preparation for a Mars sample return mission potentially launching later this decade. It is unknown if the tests have been conducted and potentially impacted the orbiter. Chinese space authorities have yet to comment on the situation.
The Tianwen-1 orbiter was initially used to assess the pre-selected landing zones for Zhurong. It was then used primarily as a communications relay for Zhurong during the rover’s primary mission phase, before then switching to focus more on its own science objectives.
It completed a mapping of the Martian surface with a medium-resolution camera by June 2022, and also completed its assigned goals for its six science payloads.
China launched its Tianwen-1 mission to Mars in July 2020 with the combination of the Tianwen-1 orbiter and Zhurong rover entering Mars orbit in February 2021.
Both Tianwen-1 and Zhurong had entered a standby mode in 2021 when the Earth and Mars were orbiting at opposite sides of the sun, causing a communications blackout.
China plans to launch the Tianwen-2 joint near-Earth asteroid sample-return and main belt comet rendezvous mission around 2025.
South Korea’s Lunar Orbiter Captures Unreal Views of Earth
From its position in low lunar orbit, South Korea’s first Moon mission caught a unique glimpse of Earth rising from behind the cratered surface of our natural satellite.
The Korean Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO), also known as Danuri, beamed back beautiful black-and-white images of Earth captured by its high-resolution camera. The two images were taken on December 24 and 28 and released by the Korean Aerospace Research Institute on Monday.
The images show a solemn Earth in the distance, while the Moon’s dusty surface appears in the foreground. From our perspective on Earth, we often see the Moon rising above our planet’s surface. But the images taken by Danuri from lunar orbit provide a counterintuitive view of our home planet glimmering behind the Moon’s surface.
Danuri captured the first image when it was 77 miles (124 kilometers) above the lunar surface and the second when it was around 213 miles (344 kilometers) above its surface.
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Danuri launched on August 5 on board SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket, marking South Korea’s first deep space mission. On December 17, the spacecraft completed its first lunar orbit insertion maneuver and entered into lunar orbit.
The 1,100-pound (500-kilogram) probe is equipped with four science instruments built locally, as well as a NASA camera to capture views of the lunar surface. From its low orbit, Danuri will explore the Moon’s shadowed regions, which could hold water ice.
By launching Danuri, South Korea hopes to advance its lunar exploration, as the orbiter is designed to scope out potential landing spots for future missions to the Moon. South Korea also wants to launch a lander and a rover, in addition to another orbiter, for the second phase of the mission.
More: Chinese Mission to Pluck Samples from Moon’s Far Side Just Got More Interesting
Why the Death of India’s Mangalyaan Mars Orbiter Is a Big Deal
On Sept. 24, 2014, sounds of celebration echoed across Bangalore as the Indian Space Research Organization had just made history.
A year earlier, the nation’s space agency blasted a little spacecraft toward Mars, hoping to punch the boxy probe into the red planet’s orbit and hover it alongside NASA’s state-of-the-art Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and ESA’s inventive Mars Express. This, at the time, was an ambitious goal.
India had yet to enter the interplanetary game, and had allotted a mere $74 million (4.5 billion rupees) to achieve what the US once did spending nearly 10 times that. Even Christopher Nolan budgeted far more to produce his glorious, space-y film, Interstellar, and Boeing’s cheapest commercial airplane costs a few million more.
Then came Sept. 24, 2014.
ISRO’s spacecraft, known as Mangalyaan, officially entered Martian orbit as part of the Mars Orbiter Mission, making India the fourth nation to insert a robot into Mars’ gravitational whirlpool — and the first to do so on its maiden try. But, as the belabored saying goes, all good things must come to an end.
This week, India bid an inevitable farewell to Mangalyaan, which translates from Hindi to “Mars craft.”
After eight incredible years of service studying the rocky world’s atmosphere and testing key technologies from the sky — a much longer lifetime than the agency expected — Mangalyaan ran out of fuel and battery power.
The culprit, scientists believe, might’ve partly been an unfortunate back-to-back sequence of solar eclipses. Mangalyaan is solar powered and therefore couldn’t charge back up without the power of the sun. Starting now, it will slowly drift toward Mars’ surface in silence.
“The spacecraft is non-recoverable and attained its end-of-life,” ISRO said in a statement Monday, emphasizing that “the mission will be ever-regarded as a remarkable technological and scientific feat in the history of planetary exploration.”
Mangalyaan’s legacy
ISRO’s Martian space explorer was a trooper.
Once Mangalyaan blasted off from Earth almost a decade ago, the spacecraft’s team expected to say goodbye to its muse in about six months. Yet, as ISRO notes, “despite being designed for a life span of six months as a technology demonstrator, the Mars Orbiter Mission has lived for about eight years in the Martian orbit with a gamut of significant scientific results.”
Not only did Mangalyaan help scientists understand elusive Martian quirks like the planet’s towering dust storms and create a detailed atlas of its icy poles, but eventually, the craft’s lens also transcended the orb’s vicinity to shed light on other parts of our solar system too. The probe, ISRO highlights in a sort of obituary, managed to decode secrets about our sun’s corona before losing contact with ground control.
And, during a national meeting held last week to discuss the mission’s finale, the team also reminisced about the more human consequences of Mangalyaan’s legacy too.
Kiran Kumar, former chairman of ISRO and key designer for India’s Mars mission stands before the first ever images of Mars taken by an Indian space craft.
Getty Images
So far, the agency said, more than 7,200 users have registered to download Mangalyaan’s data from ISRO’s online archive, 400 of whom are international, and about 27,000 downloads of varying sizes have been carried out already.
“The mission has also contributed to human resource generation in the domain of planetary sciences,” ISRO said. “It has generated several Ph.D. holders, while many of the research scholars are using the data from the mission to pursue their doctoral work.”
Indian scientists and ISRO engineers monitor the Mars Orbiter Mission at the agency’s tracking center in 2013.
Getty Images
A rocky road to the rocky world
It’s poignant to think about Mangalyaan’s everlasting imprint on space exploration because, around the time when the craft left Earth, reporters, scientists and space enthusiasts worldwide predicted a variety of directions in which that imprint could bend.
Most opinions were wide-eyed.
BBC News openly called India’s Mars mission “cheap and thrilling,” because the country’s space program “succeeded at the first attempt where others have failed,” by sending an operational mission to Martian orbit. Regarding that low cost, ISRO managed to keep things “simple,” the publication stated, attempting to get the biggest bang for its buck.
India accomplished its Martian orbital endeavor with about 1/10 what it once costed the US.
ISRO/NASA
For instance, Mangalyaan was armed with methane detectors meant to answer some of the most pressing questions about Mars’ atmosphere, like whether methane-producing bugs might exist somewhere on the planet, thus offering proof of extraterrestrial life.
“The mission is also credited with the discovery of ‘suprathermal’ Argon-40 atoms in the Martian exosphere, which gave some clue on one of the potential mechanisms for the escape of atmosphere from Mars,” ISRO said.
Some opinions were well-intentioned, but missed the mark.
In 2014, a New York Times sketch about Mangalyaan erupted in controversy because it teased the fact that India is soon to join the “elite space club.” Many found it distasteful because the character representing India was wearing a traditional dhoti and turban as well as holding a cow on a leash while knocking on the door of a so-called “elite space club.” Inside, two white men looked perplexed. One held a newspaper headlined “India’s Mars Mission.”
In an apology letter, a Times editor said the “intent of the cartoonist, Heng Kim Song, was to highlight how space exploration is no longer the exclusive domain of rich, Western countries,” though Indian reporters still felt the graphic marred the sentiment.
On the flip side, ISRO met its fair share of criticism.
Some argue that Mangalyaan’s lack of scientific publications — after five years it’d only produced about 27 — goes to show the agency was in a rush to hastily get the probe up there. Though as a response to that, others contend that Mangalyaan was meant to be a six-month-long technology demonstration and just so happened to outlive its expected lifetime. Maybe even those 27 publications are a superb achievement, in that case.
By trying to compete with wealthier nations’ interplanetary space missions, some have also suggested the agency spent money on space exploration that could’ve better been leveraged for issues closer to home. Things like health care innovation, infrastructure development and food insecurity solutions that space organizations like NASA or Roscosmos don’t have to consider, due to their residence in privileged countries.
Incredible India: we can go to Mars but cannot provide clean water to our people on Earth.
— Tavleen Singh (@tavleen_singh) November 5, 2013
As a counterargument, however, in 2013, Indian journalist Samanth Subramanian wrote in The New Yorker that “Mangalyaan’s 73-million-dollar budget is a pittance compared to the 20 billion dollars that India will spend this year to provide subsidized food to two out of every three of its citizens, or the $5.3 billion that will be spent this year on a rural employment plan.”
It’s undoubtedly difficult to measure the benefits and costs — particularly economic ones — that come from a space mission. But now, at the end of it all, it’d be remiss to exclude the ultimate payoff that came from Mangalyaan’s success.
The existence of this spacecraft spurred the creation of jobs, the mission’s unique insights enhanced the field of astronomy, and the project’s culmination exuded an evocative message.
Adventuring into space needn’t solely be based on wealth, power or privilege, but also on the intrinsic human impulse to explore.
After an amazing run at Mars, India says its orbiter has no more fuel
Enlarge / Full-disk image of Mars captured by the Mars Orbiter Mission.
ISRO
Despite its modest overall achievements, India’s Mars Orbiter Mission is one of the more notable successes of the modern spaceflight era. Launched in 2013, it was the first Mars mission built by an Asian country to reach orbit around the red planet—only the United States, Soviet Union, and European Space Agency had done so before.
And perhaps most importantly, India proved that a durable, capable Mars spacecraft could be developed on a shoestring budget. Instead of costing hundreds of millions of dollars, the Mars mission was developed for only about $25 million, through a process described by Indian officials as “frugal engineering.”
But all good things come to an end, and this weekend the Indian space agency, ISRO, announced that the mission was “non-recoverable.” The update came following a one-day meeting to discuss the spacecraft and whether it could be salvaged after communication was lost with the vehicle in April during a long eclipse when Mars moved between the orbiter and the Sun.
“During the national meet, ISRO deliberated that the propellant must have been exhausted, and therefore, the desired attitude pointing could not be achieved for sustained power generation,” the space agency said in an update posted Monday. “It was declared that the spacecraft is non-recoverable, and attended its end-of-life. The mission will be ever-regarded as a remarkable technological and scientific feat in the history of planetary exploration.”
The orbiter most definitely exceeded expectations. Originally designed for a lifetime of six months, it returned data back to Earth for nearly eight years.
Among its scientific contributions were regular images of the full disk of Mars, in color, due to the spacecraft’s elliptical orbit. Most spacecraft in orbit around Mars spend their time relatively near the planet, looking straight down at the surface. The Mars Orbiter Mission also provided valuable data about the thin Martian atmosphere and observed dust storms. Indian officials said more than 7,200 users have registered to freely download data collected by the mission.
During the meeting, scientists and engineers discussed the challenge of surviving increasingly long eclipse periods of up to seven hours. Much of the spacecraft’s onboard propellant had to be expended five years ago to reposition the vehicle to survive these eclipses and ensure enough sunlight was reaching its solar panels.
Following the success of the Mars Orbiter Mission, India committed more resources to lunar and Martian missions. The country is planning several missions to the lunar surface, with the eventual goal of returning samples. Another Mars orbiter is planned within the next few years, to be followed by a rover during the second half of the 2020s.
India loses contact with Mars orbiter: reports
India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) may have finally reached the end of its operations after eight years spent orbiting the Red Planet.
Ground stations operated by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) have lost communication with the spacecraft. The precise cause isn’t yet clear; the orbiter may have run out of propellant, MOM’s battery may drained beyond the safe operating limit, or an automated maneuver may have cut communications, according to media reports.
Having operated at Mars for eight years, MOM — also called Mangalyaan — has far exceeded its expected mission life of just six to 10 months. The craft was launched in November 2013 and entered orbit around Mars in September 2014.
Related: India’s first Mars mission in pictures (gallery)
Although ISRO has not yet released an official statement, a source with the agency told local newspaper The Hindu that “the satellite battery” has drained and “the link has been lost” with MOM.
MOM carries a 4.6 x 6-foot (1.4 x 1.8-meter) solar array wing consisting of three panels mounted on one side of the spacecraft. The array can generate 800 watts power at Mars and charges a lithium-ion battery, but the spacecraft has recently encountered a series of eclipses that could have impacted its ability to recharge.
“Recently there were back-to-back eclipses including one that lasted seven-and-half hours,” an unnamed ISRO source told The Hindu.
“As the satellite battery is designed to handle eclipse duration of only about one hour and 40 minutes, a longer eclipse would drain the battery beyond the safe limit,” another unnamed official told the paper.
MOM had come out of a long eclipse in April, but as it recovered, the spacecraft may have exhausted its remaining fuel. Upon launch, MOM carried around 1,880 pounds (852 kilograms) of fuel to power its main thruster and eight smaller thrusters used for altitude control.
There’s also a chance that the communications breakdown could be a result of MOM’s automated system bringing it out of another eclipse, according to an unnamed official’s comments in the Times of India. The system may have had the orbiter perform a roll-spin to change direction, resulting in MOM’s Earth-facing antenna pointing away from our planet and the spacecraft falling silent.
MOM had previously survived blackouts during its first and second years around Mars, recovering completely autonomously without assistance from the ground. Initial indications suggest that this new blackout is permanent, however, and multiple sources told the Times of India that whatever the cause, the spacecraft won’t be able to recover.
“Now, we are trying to ascertain the exact reason — whether it is the exhaustion of fuel or antenna being unable to communicate,” an unnamed senior scientist told the Times of India. “But one thing is for certain, we won’t be able to recover the spacecraft anymore.”
MOM was India’s first interplanetary mission and made the ISRO only the fourth space agency to achieve an orbit around the Red Planet. The spacecraft arrived at Mars just in time for it to catch the passage of Comet Siding Spring on Oct. 19, 2014.
The mission’s primary goal was to test the technology needed for interplanetary exploration and to use its instruments to study both the Martian surface and atmosphere from orbit.
The instruments on board included a color camera, a thermal infrared sensor, an ultraviolet spectrometer used to study deuterium and hydrogen in Mars’s upper atmosphere, and a mass spectrometer to study neutral particles in the outermost layers of the Martian atmosphere.
MOM also carried a sensor designed to search for methane, a molecule that, if present, could imply that life had once existed on the Red Planet. ISRO has not yet revealed that instrument’s findings.
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Strange Phenomenon on Sun Imaged by Solar Orbiter for First Time – Mystery Solved
A magnetic phenomenon known as solar switchbacks has been imaged by the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft for the first time. The image zooms in on the switchback (blue/white feature extending towards the left) as captured in the solar corona by the Metis instrument on March 25, 2022. The switchback appears to be linked to the active region seen in the central Extreme Ultraviolet Imager image (right). Credit: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI & Metis Teams and D. Telloni et al. (2022)
With fresh data from its closest pass of the Sun thus far, the ESA/
A close-up view of the Solar Orbiter Metis data turned into a movie shows the evolution of the switchback. The sequence represents around 33 minutes of data taken on March 25, 2022. The bright structure forms while propagating outwards from the Sun. As it reaches its full development it bends back on itself and acquires the distorted S-shape characteristic of a magnetic switchback. The structure expands at a speed of 80 km/s but the whole structure does not move at this speed. Instead, it stretches and distorts. This is the first time a magnetic switchback has ever been observed remotely. All other detections have taken place when spacecraft have flown through these disturbed magnetic regions. Credit: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/Metis Teams; D. Telloni et al. (2022)
Although a number of spacecraft have flown through these puzzling regions before, in situ data only allow for a measurement at a single point and time. As a consequence, the structure and shape of the switchback has to be inferred from
These magnetic structures were also probed at much larger distances from the Sun by the Ulysses spacecraft in the late 1990s. Instead of a third of the Earth’s orbital radius from the Sun, where the Helios missions made their closest pass, Ulysses operated mostly beyond the Earth’s orbit.
How a solar switchback is formed infographic. Solar Orbiter has made the first ever remote sensing observation of a magnetic phenomenon called a solar ‘switchback’, proving their origin in the solar surface and pointing to a mechanism that might help accelerate the solar wind. Credit: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI & Metis Teams and D. Telloni et al. (2022); Zank et al. (2020)
Their number rose dramatically with the arrival of NASA’s Parker Solar Probe in 2018. This clearly indicated that the sudden magnetic field reversals are more numerous close to the Sun, and led to the suggestion that they were caused by S-shaped kinks in the magnetic field. This puzzling behavior earned the phenomenon the name of switchbacks. A number of ideas were proposed as to how these might form.
On March 25, 2022, Solar Orbiter was just a day away from a close pass of the Sun – bringing it within the orbit of planet Mercury – and its Metis instrument was taking data. Metis blocks out the bright glare of light from the Sun’s surface and takes pictures of the Sun’s outer atmosphere, known as the corona. The particles in the corona are electrically charged and follow the Sun’s magnetic field lines out into space. The electrically charged particles themselves are called a plasma.
The Sun as seen by the ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter spacecraft on March 25, 2022, one day before its closest approach of about 0.32 au, which brought it inside the orbit of planet Mercury. The central image was taken by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument. The outer image was taken by the coronagraph Metis, an instrument that blocks out the bright light of the Sun’s surface in order to see the Sun’s faint outer atmosphere, known as the corona. The Metis image has been processed to bring out structures in the corona. This revealed the switchback (the prominent white/light blue feature at the roughly 8 o’clock position in the lower left). It appears to trace back to the active region on the surface of the Sun, where loops of magnetism have broken through the Sun’s surface. Credit: ESA & NASA/Solar Orbiter/EUI & Metis Teams and D. Telloni et al. (2022)
At around 20:39 UT, Metis recorded an image of the solar corona that showed a distorted S-shaped kink in the coronal plasma. To Daniele Telloni, National Institute for Astrophysics – Astrophysical Observatory of Torino, Italy, it looked suspiciously like a solar switchback.
Comparing the Metis image, which had been taken in visible light, with a concurrent image taken by Solar Orbiter’s Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) instrument, he saw that the candidate switchback was taking place above an active region cataloged as AR 12972. Active regions are associated with sunspots and magnetic activity. Further analysis of the Metis data showed that the speed of the plasma above this region was very slow, as would be expected from an active region that has yet to release its stored energy.
Daniele instantly thought this resembled a generating mechanism for the switchbacks proposed by Prof. Gary Zank, from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, USA. The theory looked at the way different magnetic regions near the surface of the Sun interact with each other.
ESA’s Solar Orbiter has solved the mystery of a magnetic phenomenon in the solar wind. It has taken the first-ever image of a ‘switchback’ in the solar corona, confirming its predicted ‘S’ shape. A switchback is defined by rapid flips in the magnetic field direction. The observed switchback is linked to an active region associated with sunspots and magnetic activity where there is an interaction between open and closed magnetic field lines. The interaction releases energy and sends the S-shaped disturbance into space. The new data suggest that switchbacks could originate near the solar surface, and may be important in understanding the acceleration and heating of the solar wind. Credit: ESA
Close to the Sun, and especially above active regions, there are open and closed magnetic field lines. The closed lines are loops of magnetism that arch up into the solar atmosphere before curving round and disappearing back into the Sun. Very little plasma can escape into space above these field lines and so the speed of the solar wind tends to be slow here. Open field lines are the reverse, they emanate from the Sun and connect with the interplanetary magnetic field of the Solar System. They are magnetic highways along which the plasma can flow freely, and give rise to the fast solar wind.
Daniele and Gary proved that switchbacks occur when there is an interaction between a region of open field lines and a region of closed field lines. As the field lines crowd together, they can reconnect into more stable configurations. Rather like cracking a whip, this releases energy and sets an S-shaped disturbance traveling off into space, which a passing spacecraft would record as a switchback.
Metis observation of the switchback is consistent with the sound theoretical mechanism for the production of solar magnetic switchbacks proposed in 2020 by Prof. Gary Zank. The key observation was that the switchback could be seen emanated from above a solar active region. This sequence shows the chain of events that the researchers think is taking place. (a) Active regions on the Sun can feature open and closed magnetic field lines. The closed lines arch up into the solar atmosphere before curving round back into the Sun. The open field lines connect with the interplanetary magnetic field of the Solar System. (b) When an open magnetic region interacts with a closed region, the magnetic field lines can reconnect, creating an approximately S-shape field line and producing a burst of energy. (c) As the field line responds to the reconnection and the release of energy, a kink is set propagating outwards. This is the switchback. A similar switchback is also sent in the opposite direction, down the field line, and into the Sun. Credit: Zank et al. (2020)
According to Gary Zank, who proposed one of the theories for the origin of switchbacks, “The first image from Metis that Daniele showed suggested to me almost immediately the cartoons that we had drawn (see image above) in developing the mathematical model for a switchback. Of course, the first image was just a snapshot and we had to temper our enthusiasm until we had used the excellent Metis coverage to extract temporal information and do a more detailed spectral analysis of the images themselves. The results proved to be absolutely spectacular!”
Together with a team of other researchers, they built a computer model of the behavior, and found that their results bore a striking resemblance to the Metis image, especially after they included calculations for how the structure would elongate during its propagation outwards through the solar corona.
“I would say that this first image of a magnetic switchback in the solar corona has revealed the mystery of their origin,” says Daniele, whose results are published in a paper in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
In understanding switchbacks, solar physicists may also be taking a step toward understanding the details of how the solar wind is accelerated and heated away from the Sun. This is because when spacecraft fly through switchbacks, they often register a localized acceleration of the solar wind.
“The next step is to try to statistically link switchbacks observed in situ with their source regions on the Sun,” says Daniele. In other words, to have a spacecraft fly through the magnetic reversal and be able to see what’s happened on the solar surface. This is exactly the kind of linkage science that Solar Orbiter was designed to do, but it does not necessarily mean that Solar Orbiter needs to fly through the switchback. It could be another spacecraft, such as Parker Solar Probe. As long as the in-situ data and remote sensing data is concurrent, Daniele can perform the correlation.
“This is exactly the kind of result we were hoping for with Solar Orbiter,” says Daniel Müller, ESA Project Scientist for Solar Orbiter. “With every orbit, we obtain more data from our suite of ten instruments. Based on results like this one, we will fine-tune the observations planned for Solar Orbiter’s next solar encounter to understand the way in which the Sun connects to the wider magnetic environment of the Solar System. This was Solar Orbiter’s very first close pass to the Sun, so we expect many more exciting results to come.”
Solar Orbiter’s next close pass of the Sun – again within the orbit of Mercury at a distance of 0.29 times the Earth-Sun distance – will take place on 13 October. Earlier this month, on 4 September, Solar Orbiter made a gravity assist flyby at
Coronal Mass Ejection Hits Solar Orbiter Spacecraft Before Venus Gravity-Assist Flyby
In the early hours of Sunday, September 4, Solar Orbiter flew by
Artist’s impression of Solar Orbiter making a flyby at Venus. Credit: ESA/ATG medialab
Fortunately, there was no damage or no negative effects on the spacecraft. Indeed, the ESA-
So far, Solar Orbiter has been confined to the same plane as the planets, but from February 2025 onwards, each encounter with Venus will increase its orbital inclination, causing it to ‘leap’ up from the plane of the Solar System to get a view of the Sun’s mysterious polar regions.
This third flyby of Venus took place on Sunday at 01:26
Its distance from Venus, angle of approach, and velocity were all carefully planned to get the precise desired effect from the planet’s large gravitational pull – getting the spacecraft closer to the Sun than ever before.
Solar Orbiter Flight Control Team during pre-launch simulations in 2020. Credit: ESA
“The close approach went exactly to plan, thanks to a great deal of planning from our colleagues in Flight Dynamics and the diligent care of the Flight Control Team,” explains Jose-Luis Pellon-Bailon, Solar Orbiter Operations Manager.
“By trading ‘orbital energy’ with Venus, Solar Orbiter has used the planet’s gravity to change its orbit without the need for masses of expensive fuel. When it returns to the Sun, the spacecraft’s closest approach will be about 4.5 million km (2.8 million miles) closer than before.”
Understanding particles that pose a radiation risk
Data beamed back to Earth since Solar Orbiter encountered the solar storm shows how its local environment changed as the large CME whooshed by. Although some instruments had to be turned off during its close approach to Venus, in order to protect them from stray sunlight reflected off of the planet’s surface, Solar Orbiter’s ‘in situ’ instruments remained on, recording an increase in solar energetic particles, among other things.
This composite image shows a SOHO image of the Sun and an artist’s impression of Earth’s magnetosphere. Credit: Magnetosphere: NASA, the Sun: ESA/NASA – SOHO
Particles, mostly protons and electrons, but also some ionized atoms like Helium, are constantly emitted by the Sun. When particularly large flares and ejections of
Solar Orbiter’s suite of ten science instruments that will study the Sun. There are two types: in situ and remote sensing. The in situ instruments measure the conditions around the spacecraft itself. The remote-sensing instruments measure what is happening at large distances away. Together, both sets of data can be used to piece together a more complete picture of what is happening in the Sun’s corona and the solar wind. Credit: ESA-S.Poletti
Goodbye, halo?
This recent CME illustrates a difficulty in space weather observations. As seen in this footage from
Large coronal mass ejection (CME) was recorded by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) on August 30, 2022. The CME struck ESA’s Solar Orbiter spacecraft as it performed a flyby of Venus. Credit: ESA/NASA SOHO
It is tricky to determine if coronal mass ejections are coming towards Earth or moving away when viewed from Earth, because in both cases it appears to be expanding. One of the many benefits of the coming Vigil mission is that by combining the images taken from Earth’s direction and Vigil’s position at the ‘side’ of the Sun, the fifth Lagrange point, it will be easy and reliable to distinguish between an oncoming or departing storm.
Space weather gets deep
The Sun wields its influence on all the bodies of the Solar System. It’s the reason why no life could survive on the inner planets, as the sun makes their temperatures too hot and stripped away their atmospheres long ago.
As we venture from Earth to the Moon, it’s vital that we understand how space weather can affect human bodies, robots, communication systems, and plants and animals.
Solar Orbiter’s stellar views hint at Vigil’s future. Credit: ESA
As well as a wide range of tools to understand the Sun’s effect on Earth’s infrastructure, ESA’s Space Weather Service Network currently alerts teams flying missions throughout the Solar System of extreme space weather, with forecasts for Mercury, Venus, and
Solar Orbiter Just Got Hit by a Gigantic Outburst From the Sun
Solar Orbiter has been traveling through space for more than two years, making several close flybys of Venus as it steadily inches closer to the Sun. On September 4, the small spacecraft was in the midst of its most recent gravitational assist when it felt the violent wrath of our host star.
The Sun fired off a gigantic coronal mass ejection on August 30, reaching the spacecraft just a few days later. Thankfully, Solar Orbiter is built to withstand these types of temperamental outbursts from the Sun, and it was even able to collect valuable data on solar storms.
Launched in February 2020, Solar Orbiter is a collaborative mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA. It’s designed to observe the Sun from up close and resolve some of the lingering mysteries about solar wind, the Sun’s magnetic field, and the rather unpredictable space weather. Throughout the course of its decade-long mission, the spacecraft will perform several flybys of Venus to adjust its orbit, bringing it closer to the Sun and out of the solar system plane such that it can peer down at the Sun from a unique vantage point. Solar Orbiter returns to Venus every few orbits around the Sun (one orbit takes around 168 days), but its latest rendezvous with the second planet was unusually eventful.
The Sun frequently produces coronal mass ejections (CMEs), or ejections of plasma that shoot out from the Sun and spread outward through the solar system. CMEs erode the Venusian atmosphere as the solar wave strips the planet of its gases, according to an ESA statement. On August 30, a massive CME shot out of the Sun and headed towards Venus. It reached the planet just as Solar Orbiter was about to make its third close flyby of Venus, with the spacecraft recording an increase in solar energetic particles.
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Some of the spacecraft’s instruments had to be turned off during its flyby around Venus, but its scientific instruments were still running, allowing it to collect valuable data on the Sun’s latest outburst. Solar Orbiter is designed to withstand a distance of just 0.27 AU from the Sun’s surface (almost three-quarters of the total distance from Earth to the Sun), where temperatures reach 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (537 degrees Celsius). The spacecraft has a special black coating that protects it from the Sun’s scorching temperatures. Solar Orbiter will be capable of getting close enough to the Sun to observe its eruptions without being harmed.
Understanding solar flares is crucial for the future of space exploration as space weather can pose serious risks for spacecraft and astronauts venturing off to cosmic destinations.
“Gathering data on events like this is crucial to understanding how they arise, improving our space weather models, forecasts and early-warning systems,” Alexi Glover, ESA Space Weather Service Coordinator, said in the statement. “Solar Orbiter is providing us with an excellent opportunity to compare our forecasts with real observations and test how well our models and tools perform for these regions.”
More: Sun-Orbiting Spacecraft Takes Fascinating Images of a Coronal Mass Ejection