Solar Orbiter launched a year ago on February 9, 2020, 11:03 PM EST. It has been a crazy year getting the instruments operational and working on the first scientific papers for the mission. The mission has already been able to help us begin to investigate the transport of suprathermal particles associated with Corotating Interaction Regions, investigate the processes leading to different helium isotopes found in impulsive energetic particle events, and study near-relativistic solar electron events! We also completed our first Venus flyby, which is allowing us to better understand the energetic particle environment near this induced magnetosphere (more on that in the next few weeks!). All in all, this has been a very productive first year for Solar Orbiter!
Go Solar Orbiter!