The Sky at Night S2020E02 - Here Comes the Sun

Esa's solar orbiter was launched from Cape Canaveral earlier this year on a decade long mission to discover the secrets of our sun. And the Sky at Night was there to capture all the action. Two aspects of this mission make it unique. First, the spacecraft is designed to capture the highest resolution images of the sun ever taken. And then it will orbit the sun to give us a glimpse of what's happening at the its poles, areas we have never seen before.

In this programme, we discover just how this spacecraft was built, how it will protect itself against the sun's searing heat and how it will investigate the mysteries of the sun with a suite of ten instruments designed and built across 17 European countries.