UK-built solar orbiter satellite en route to the sun  

Launched on 10^th February aboard an Atlas V 411 rocket, the Solar Orbiter mission will provide the first views of the Sun’s uncharted polar regions, which scientists believe are key to understanding the activity of the star. It will also investigate how intense radiation and energetic particles being blasted out from the Sun and carried by the solar wind through the Solar System impact our home planet, to better understand and predict periods of stormy ‘space weather’.

NASA's Parker probe heads for the sun 

James Webb telescope layers up for the sun

The satellite at the heart of the project, built in the UK by prime contractor Airbus Defence and Space, will take just under two years to reach its initial operational orbit, making use of gravity-assist flybys of Earth and Venus to enter a highly elliptical orbit around the Sun.

At its closest, Solar Orbiter will face the Sun from within the orbit of Mercury, approximately 42 million kilometres from the solar surface where it will have to endure temperatures exceeding 500°C, hot enough to melt lead. The spacecraft’s payload of cutting edge scientific instruments will be protected by a heatshield covered in a special heat-emitting coating called SolarBlack.