Cosmic Vision
2 Nov 2011 by Evoluted New Media
The UK is set to unlock the secrets of the Sun and search for dark energy after the European Space Agency (ESA) gave the go ahead for two missions to explore the Solar System as part of their Cosmic Vision programme.
Solar Orbiter – the most ambitious mission to study the Sun – has officially been adopted by ESA and will go forward immediately, with launch planned for 2017. Euclid – which will look for dark energy –must complete a study phase before it is fully adopted in June 2012, for a 2019 launch.
Designed to travel closer to the Sun than any other probe, Solar Orbiter will house ten instruments – four of which have UK involvement. The Solar Wind Analyser (SWA) – led by MSSL – will use three separate sensors to measure different elements of the solar wind and characterise its behaviour under different solar conditions. MAG, or the Magnetometer, will have two sensors on a deployable boom in the shadow of the spacecraft enabling it to sample the magnetic field in situ and provide important diagnostic information.
“Solar Orbiter is Europe’s mission to the Sun,” said Professor Tim Horbury from Imperial College London. “It will give us our first good view of the Sun’s Polar regions and by travelling closer than Mercury, it will give us a unique close-up view of the Sun’s atmosphere and how it blows off into space, past the Earth and into the far Solar System.”
Nine UK institutions are involved with Euclid, which aims to capture light from distant galaxies and study their shape using a massive optical digital camera. VIS can take images 100 times larger than Hubble and together they will looks back at the last 10 billion years, hoping to explain the accelerated expansion of the Universe and capture light from distant galaxies to reveal the underlying ‘dark’ architecture of the cosmos.
“With strong UK involvement in these ambitions projects, we are set to maintain our country’s position as a leader in space science within Europe,” said Dr David Williams, chief executive of the UK Space Agency.
“These exciting missions are a prime example of collaboration between academia and the UK high-tech industry and will not only further our knowledge of space science, but could help us unlock some of the greatest mysteries of our Universe.”
