Space
New Sun mission to launch in attempt to snap 1st-ever photos of star’s poles
A new spacecraft is set to launch on a journey to the Sun. It’s goal: to snap the first pictures of the Sun’s north and south poles.
Dubbed Solar Orbiter, the spacecraft is a collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA. The 3,970-lb. (1,320 kg) spacecraft will launch atop United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket on Feb. 7, 2020, during a two-hour launch window that opens at 11:15 p.m. EST (0415 GMT Feb. 8).
It’s launching at night because the spacecraft is on a path to Venus where it will use the planet’s gravity to slingshot itself out of the ecliptic plane — the area of space where all planets orbit.
From that vantage point, Solar Orbiter’s on-board cameras will capture the first-ever view of the Sun’s poles.
“Up until Solar Orbiter, all solar imaging instruments have been within the ecliptic plane or very close to it,” Russell Howard, space scientist at the Naval Research Lab in Washington, D.C. and principal investigator for one of Solar Orbiter’s ten instruments said in a mission update. “Now, we’ll be able to look down on the Sun from above.”
“It will be terra incognita,” added Daniel Müller, ESA project scientist for the mission at the European Space Research and Technology Centre in the Netherlands. “This is really exploratory science.”
The spacecraft is taking a suite of specialized instruments with it on its journey to the sun. It will also work in tandem with another solar-observing spacecraft—NASA’s Parker Solar Probe.
Launched in 2018, Parker has now completed its first few close passes of the sun. The spacecraft is already making discoveries, showing that despite appearance, the sun is anything but quiet.
It plays a central role in shaping space around us. As a magnetically active star, the sun unleashes powerful bursts of light and a slew of charged particles (racing at near light-speed) across the solar system. This violent activity has been happening throughout the sun’s 5.5 billion-year lifespan and affects our planet daily.
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The sun has a massive magnetic field, which stretches far beyond Pluto, and creates the boundary between our solar system and interstellar space. It also creates a path for charged particles to whiz across the solar system.
The barrage of energetic particles, known as the solar wind, can damage spacecraft, satellites, and is harmful to our astronauts. It can disrupt navigation signals, and during extreme flares, can even trigger power outages.
But we can prepare for these things by monitoring the sun’s activity and magnetic field. However, our view from Earth is limited and leaves us with incomplete data. Scientists are hoping that by observing the sun’s polar regions, Solar Orbiter will be able to fill in the gaps in our knowledge.
“The poles are particularly important for us to be able to model more accurately,” Holly Gilbert, NASA project scientist for the mission at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “For forecasting space weather events, we need a pretty accurate model of the global magnetic field of the Sun.”
Solar Orbiter will take seven years to reach a viewpoint 24 degrees above the Sun’s equator, increasing to 33 degrees if the mission is extended an additional three years. That will provide the best views ever of the poles.
Additionally, the poles may be able to shed some light on the driving force behind sun spots — dark spots on the sun’s surface that mark strong magnetic fields. In 1843, German astronomer, Samuel Heinrich Schwabe, discovered that the spots increase and decrease during the solar cycle in a repeating pattern.
There are an abundance of sunspots during solar maximum (when the sun is active and turbulent) and fewer during solar minimum (when the sun is calmer). But scientists don’t understand why the cycle lasts 11 years, or why some solar maximums are stronger than others.
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They hope to find the answer by observing the changing magnetic fields at the poles.
There’s only been one other spacecraft to fly over the sun’s polar regions: another joint ESA/NASA venture called Ulysses. It made three passes around the sun before being decommissioned in 2009. However, unlike Solar Orbiter, Ulysses did not have an imager on board to take pictures of the poles.
That spacecraft also did not get nearly as close as Solar Orbiter will. That’s because it lacked the technology required to keep it cool. Scientists have been waiting more than 60 years for missions like Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter to come online.
It’s takes a lot of technology development to be able to design and build a spacecraft that will survive a close encounter with the sun.
Solar Orbiter is outfitted with a custom-designed titanium heat shield, topped with a calcium phosphate coating that withstands temperatures over 900 degrees Fahrenheit (482 degrees Celsius). That’s thirteen times the amount of heat that spacecraft in Earth-orbit are subjected to.
SpaceX performed a secret test on a specific portion of Starship with its recent 13th test flight last week, CEO Elon Musk revealed.
Starship’s 13th test flight took place last Friday, and in many aspects, it was one of the most overwhelmingly successful launches in the project’s history.
All of the mission objectives were met without incident, both the Super Heavy Booster and Ship managed to perform safe splashdowns in the Gulf of America and the Indian Ocean, respectively, and the deployment of Starlink satellites came and went without any complications.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
However, there was more on the agenda for SpaceX with Flight 13. Musk revealed an internal test of the ship’s heat shield tiles, as the space exploration company wanted to push them to the limits after previous issues.
Many noticed that Starship’s initial launch seemed to be more accelerated than normal, and that was not a mistake. Musk revealed that SpaceX decided to give Flight 13 an intentionally aggressive acceleration rate in an effort to test how well the tiles would remain attached to the ship:
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This flight intentionally had much higher acceleration to test how well the heat shield tiles would remain attached at high dynamic pressure.
Test was successful.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
SpaceX had issues with some of the heat shield tiles remaining attached early on in the Starship program. The first six test flights presented some kind of anomaly with them, so the company’s big focus with them was to figure out a way to keep them intact through the duration of the flight.
Things truly improved as Flight 10 showed that ceramic tiles generally stayed attached to the ship far better due to refined attachment, as SpaceX utilized pins instead of adhesives. Flights 10 through 13 truly showed some clear progress with the heat shield tiles, and this latest test seems to be where some real progress was noticed, especially by Musk.
The 13th Starship launch last Friday was the second with Starship V3, SpaceX’s latest and greatest iteration of the spacecraft. Goals and ambitions are getting even grander as the project continues to progress. Musk has already hinted that SpaceX will likely try to catch Starship with Flight 14.
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Just hours after Starship Flight 13 achieved a successful soft splashdown of its upper stage in the Indian Ocean on July 24, Elon Musk announced an ambitious next step for the company’s next launch of the rocket.
“Unless we discover problems after mission data review, SpaceX will attempt to catch the ship with the tower on [the] next flight,” the SpaceX CEO posted on X on Friday.
That “next flight” is expected to be Flight 14. The plan involves returning the Starship upper stage, commonly called the “ship,” to the Starbase launch tower in Texas and catching it mid-air using the same mechanical “chopsticks” arms that have already proven themselves with the Super Heavy booster.
Unless we discover problems after mission data review, SpaceX will attempt to catch the ship with the tower on next flight
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
A successful catch would mark the first time an orbital-class upper stage has been recovered this way, advancing SpaceX’s goal of full and rapid reusability for the entire vehicle.
SpaceX has already demonstrated the tower-catch technique multiple times with Super Heavy. The first successful catch came on Flight 5 in October 2024, when Booster 12 was plucked from the sky by the Mechazilla arms. Subsequent flights, including those involving Boosters 14 and 15, repeated the feat. Several of those recovered boosters were later inspected, refurbished, and flown again, proving the system’s viability for quick turnaround.
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Traditional reusable rockets, such as SpaceX’s own Falcon 9 or Blue Origin’s New Shepard, land on legs either on land or droneships. Rocket Lab has recovered its small Electron first stages by helicopter, but those are far lighter vehicles.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
The China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT), a subsidiary of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC), completed a catch of its booster on July 10. They are the only entity besides SpaceX to attempt and complete the feat.
Flight 13 provided encouraging data. The ship executed a controlled reentry, flipped, and soft-landed intact in the ocean after deploying Starlink satellites, offering the first clear post-splashdown views of an undamaged heat shield. The Super Heavy booster, meanwhile, experienced a harder splashdown in the Gulf of America.
Musk has previously stressed that ship catches would only follow multiple successful soft ocean landings to minimize risk of debris over land.
If Flight 14 succeeds, SpaceX would take a major stride toward routine, rapid reuse of both stages—critical for lowering launch costs and supporting ambitious plans for lunar and Mars missions. For now, teams are reviewing the Flight 13 data. Should everything check out, the next Starship flight could deliver one of the most spectacular recoveries in aerospace history.
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Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
SpaceX’s Starship flew successfully Friday, landing both stages and deploying its first Starlink V3 satellites.
Starship’s thirteenth test flight delivered exactly what SpaceX needed with a clean liftoff, two successful stage recoveries, and the first real payload the vehicle has ever carried to space. Booster 20 and Ship 40 lifted off at 5:51 p.m. CT from Starbase, and by the time the mission wrapped roughly an hour later, both halves of the rocket had done exactly what they were supposed to do.
Booster 20 separated from Ship 40 a few minutes into the flight and stuck a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about six minutes after liftoff. That is a meaningful turnaround from Flight 12 in May, when the booster lost several engines during its boostback burn before a hard water landing attempt.
Starship as seen from Starlink satellites pic.twitter.com/e2hvfmnewh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
Starship 40’s performance was arguably the bigger win. The vehicle deployed the first 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites Starship has ever carried, then flew a suborbital arc to a landing in the Indian Ocean that SpaceX commentator Dan Huot called the company’s softest splashdown yet. “This is a dream scenario for this team that’s trying to get this heat shield data,” Huot said on the live broadcast, according to Space.com’s live coverage. “I’m a little over the moon right now. Wow. Lucky number 13.”
Unlike the mass simulators SpaceX flew on Flight 12, these were production Starlink V3 satellites, meant to extend solar arrays and antennas and attempt to link with the broader constellation before reentering minutes later. Getting real hardware through a full deploy sequence on only the second flight of the V3 generation keeps Starship on schedule for the payload work NASA is counting on for future Artemis lunar landings.
What an awesome launch, really seems like everything went super well and it was all incredibly smooth.
SpaceX is awesome. Very interested to see how the market will respond on Monday pic.twitter.com/KSHmyBfV55
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
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— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
The flight also arrives at a moment when SpaceX needed a win. SPCX has traded below its $135 IPO price since mid-July, as Teslarati reported when the mission slipped to Friday, and short interest has climbed to roughly a third of the tradable float. A clean flight will not fix a balance sheet, but it does answer the one question SpaceX absolutely needed answered this week: whether the fixes made after the July 16 abort would hold up under real flight conditions. They did, on both stages, on the first try after the redesign.
SpaceX has not set a target date for Flight 14, though the company has said it wants to push toward an orbital attempt on the next mission. After Friday, that goal looks a lot more within reach.
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