For my post this week, I decided to explore and learn about a spacecraft that I was not familiar with. After some research, I came across SOHO. SOHO is the longest-lived Sun-watching satellite to date. SOHO over its lifetime has been able to observe two full 11-year solar cycles and discover thousands of comets close to the Sun.
SOHO is the result of a joint effort between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). The satellite was launched on December 2nd, 1995 from Cape Canaveral, Florida and contains 12 different scientific instruments. In December of 2020, SOHO will have reached 25 years of continuous exploration and observation of the Sun.
SOHO has fundamentally changed ideas about what the Sun is over the course of its lifetime. According to Bernard Fleck, the ESA project scientist for SOHO, the satellite has changed our conceptions of the Sun from “a picture of a static, unchanging object in the sky to the dynamic beast it is.” Without SOHO, our knowledge of the Sun would not be where it is today.
Jack's Blog 
It’s amazing to see a human-made spacecraft out there in space observing the Sun from a close distance. It’s even more amazing that this spacecraft has allowed us to expand our knowledge of the Sun tremendously. The spacecraft must’ve required a great deal of engineering and precise calculations to withstand all the harsh conditions of being close to the Sun. This post made me realize our potential as humanity. With the rate at which technology is advancing, I believe that we will be able to achieve far greater things in the future.
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Yes! All these advances started out as a dream that were made into a reality once technology caught up.
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Hi Jack! Thank you for your post. Did you learn about the orbit of SOHO’s? Anyone want to comment on where you would put a satellite in orbit to best study the Sun?
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(SOHO not SOHO’s)
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