Stellar line-up: the Solar Orbiter mission

The influence of the Sun is all-pervasive. The massive ball of fusing hydrogen at the centre of the Solar System drives life on Earth, the weather and, ultimately, most of the processes on the planet. Its gravity keeps the other planets, the asteroids and myriad comets, dust particles and many other chunks of matter in their orbits. And it spews out a constant, ferocious stream of charged particles into space for millions of miles in all directions — the phenomenon known as the solar wind. It’s also found its way into our folklore — in particular, stories about what happens when you get too close to it. From the ancient Greeks’ tale of Icarus to the Danny Boyle film Sunshine (and taking in a memorable episode of the puppet epic Thunderbirds on the way), we’re not short of warnings about the dangers of approaching the Sun.

But that’s not deterring space scientists. Solar research is a hot topic, and scientists and engineers from both the US and Europe are currently preparing missions that will approach the Sun more closely than ever before, in an effort to discover how our stellar neighbour influences its surroundings and what the implications of that may be for us, and our technologies, on Earth.