Subject line: study of the Sun and its phenomena
Responsibility of the mission: ESA/NASA
Date of launch: December 2nd, 1995
End of mission: ongoing
Description
SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) is a space telescope located 1,5 million kilometers away from Earth; it continuously monitors the Sun’s turbulent activity, restoring significant images and data of solar storms. Launched on December 2nd, 1995, from the Spaceport Florida Launch Complex 36, SOHO is often defined as the most important existing comet discoverer, since it discovered more than 2300 bodies in its over 20 years of operation. This skill is due to a privileged point of view, which allows the telescope to always keep the Sun and the objects approaching it under control. In fact, SOHO rotates along with the Earth around our star, in the L1 Lagrange point, where the combined gravities of the two bodies allows for an uninterrupted view of the Sun.
This choice allows the 12 on-board instruments to produce a huge amount of data and images, which are partly made public. In fact, the scientific community has been participating in the SOHO mission for many years, obtaining relevant results in the field of solar wind physics (for both the corona and the heliosphere).
Scientific goals
The probe carries on-board 12 scientific instruments; each of them is capable of observing independently the Sun, from the structure and dynamics of its internal part to the solar wind. In particular, the mission studies the temperature of the corona, the most external layer of the atmosphere
