ESA-NASA’s Sun-observing SOHO mission marks 25 yrs in space

Washington, Dec 3 : The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a joint mission between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA, has become the longest-running Sun-surveying spacecraft as it marks its 25th launch anniversary.
Launched on December 2, 1995, SOHO’s original operating phase was scheduled for two years — and now, through repeated extensions, it is celebrating a quarter century in orbit, NASA said on Wednesday, adding that the spacecraft also survived near catastrophe twice.
Over the years, its set of instruments became a source for numerous scientific findings, an inspiration for follow-on missions, and an outlet for citizen scientists.
SOHO was meant to provide a comprehensive look at the flow of energy and material from the Sun toward Earth.
The 12 instruments onboard allowed the spacecraft to return a specialised combination of observations — an asset for solar scientists who wanted to understand how our star worked.
At the time, this kind of basic physics research was considered the main goal, but over the last quarter of a century, researchers learned they could, in fact, begin to monitor our Sun in real time, studying and attempting to predict the space weather it sent our way.