Description
The ESA/NASA Solar Orbiter mission started its nominal science phase at the end of 2021, after a little less than two years of cruise phase. By June 2026, 9 remote-sensing observation campaigns will have taken place, with coordination with other international space missions as well as ground-based infrastructures. On top of this, Solar Orbiter regularly monitors the Sun and the heliosphere with its 10 suites of remote-sensing and in situ instruments.
The mission therefore gives an unprecedented linkage between the activity of the Sun and measurements of dynamic processes happening in the solar wind.
Recent observations reveal that tiny plasma jets in coronal holes, only a few hundred kilometers wide and lasting about a minute, may contribute to both the fast and slow solar wind, suggesting that similar small-scale processes can feed multiple outflow regimes. Coordinated campaigns have also shown that variations in the elemental and charge-state composition of the solar wind correspond to specific source regions on the Sun, from open coronal holes to boundary layers between open and closed magnetic field structures. These regions, shaped by magnetic reconnection, provide escape channels for plasma with distinctive composition “fingerprints” that ultimately can flow into interplanetary space.
On top of this, the Sun’s atmosphere is highly dynamical: they are the locations of energetic events such as solar flares, which can accelerate particles in the interplanetary medium. These solar energetic particle (SEP) events can have strong enrichments in certain heavy ions, helping connect their source regions via remote composition diagnostics and therefore constrain models of acceleration processes.
Throughout this talk, we will thus see how Solar Orbiter provides an unparalleled opportunity to observe how processes in the solar atmosphere, and in particular its various magnetic regions, shape and modulate events in the heliosphere.