Solar Orbiter Blasts Off on Historic Mission

Europe and NASA’s Solar Orbiter rocketed into space on an unprecedented mission to capture the first pictures of the Sun’s elusive poles.
While Solar Orbiter won’t venture close enough to penetrate the Sun’s corona, or crown-like outer atmosphere, like Parker, it will manoeuvre into a unique out-of-plane orbit that will take it over both poles, never photographed before.
Solar Orbiter — a boxy 4,000-pound spacecraft will swing past Venus in December and again next year, and then past Earth, using the planets’ gravity to alter its path.