Last night at 11:03 p.m. EST, the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA successfully launched their joint Solar Orbiter mission from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, with the spacecraft catching a ride aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.

During its mission, the Solar Orbiter will get up close and personal with the Sun in order to investigate our host star and its magnetic field, as well as how the Sun influences our solar system as a whole. Though the spacecraft will spend a few years easing into its unique elliptical orbit around the Sun, once there, it will be well positioned to also study the Suns poles up close for the first time.

Equipped with a camera, the orbiter's special orbit which occasionally takes it closer to the Sun than Mercury ever gets will enable the spacecraft to snap the first ever photos of the Sun's poles. Over the course of its mission, researchers plan to have the Solar Orbiter make 22 close approaches to the Sun.

There are 10 different instruments onboard the orbiter that will collaboratively study the Sun, including a visible light telescope and tools to capture solar wind particles, dust, and cosmic rays.

As humans, we have always been familiar with the importance of the Sun to life on Earth, observing it and investigating how it works in detail, but we have also long known it has the potential to disrupt everyday life should we be in the firing line of a powerful solar storm, Gnther Hasinger, ESA director of Science, said in a NASA press release. By the end of our Solar Orbiter mission, we will know more about the hidden force responsible for the Suns changing behavior and its influence on our home planet than ever before."

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Solar Orbiter is on its way to study the Sun - Astronomy Magazine