Solar Obiter's Venus flyby may reveal its interactions with Solar Winds

The Solar Orbiter which is a symbol of the joint association of US-European space exploration had a closest approach to the second planet of our Solar System. It was yesterday that is December 27 when the orbiter, which is set on a journey to the Sun, found itself nearest to the planet, Venus. Here is all about the approach.

Solar Orbiter makes its closest encounter with Venus 

Image ~ ESA

The joint U.S.-European Solar Orbiter spacecraft came closest to Venus on December 27 at 7:39 a.m. EST (12:39 GMT or 06:09 PM IST). According to a report by Space.com, the spacecraft was about 7,500 kilometres away from the planet's cloud tops. The spacecraft's journey to the Sun is going have several loops, including the flyby of Venus. So, the scientists tried making the most out of the opportunity to collect some important data during this closest approach. 

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Daniel Müller who is the project scientist for the mission at the European Space Agency said in a news statement at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union that the "Solar Orbiter is, of course, a mission not designed specifically to take Venus observations. We are always looking for bonus opportunities to do science, so yes, we will be doing observations when we approach Venus." Nevertheless, the focus of this mission is to study the Sun, which is why the data collection time for Venus is limited. So, there would not be any images of Venus coming out from this spacecraft.

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But, the Solar Orbiter did gather data using the magnetometer, radio and plasma waves instrument and the other sensors on the energetic particle detector. This data will help scientists to understand how Venus interacts with the Solar Winds as the planet does not have its magnetic field like the Earth. So, the Solar Winds direct affect the planet instead of the magnetic field which is quite interesting and different.

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Image ~ NASA

The Solar Orbiter is the partnership between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) which was launched in February. the spacecraft will spend seven years studying our Sun. On the other hand, the Solar Orbiter constitutes a unique design that will protect the spacecraft from the Sun's heat. According to Muller, the Sun-wary design has a heat shield. He mentioned that the spacecraft needs "to point our heat shield toward the sun, that cannot be changed. The telescopes are all looking through the heat shield in the solar direction."

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The Solar Orbiter will provide some detailed views of the Sun's poles. But, scientists are also looking forward to knowing the immediate environment of the home star. The spacecraft is equipped with enough suite of instruments that are said to deliver the expected results as the scientists probed.