In its closest flyby yet of the sun, SolarOrbiter spied a spiky “hedgehog” feature and watched a solar outburst in ways never done before.
On March 21, the Solar Orbiter detected an X-ray flare at the sun’s edge. The spacecraft’s ultraviolet instrument also captured the shock wave created by the flare.Several days before spying the 25,000-kilometer-wide hedgehog, four of Solar Orbiter’s instruments detected an X-ray flare and observed how it affected nearby space. This is what the spacecraft was built to do, Berghmans says.
The spacecraft’s focus is “connection science,” he says. Solar Orbiter’s instruments detected the solar flare, the shock wave it created and the produced burst of charged particles and radio signals — one after another — over several hours. Previously, different telescopes would detect these separately over days.
By connecting the sequence of events into “a complete story,” Berghmans says, scientists can better predict the outflows of those charged particles, which are especially dangerous to astronauts, satellites and even high-flying aircraft. The spacecraft will pass close to the sun roughly every five to six months through 2026. Then, for three more years, the orbiter will swing closer to the sun’s poles, providing scientists with their first head-on views of those regions.
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