We are not going so very far from Earth today, only two and a half light-minutes or so, to a point where, come 2017, Czech technology will be orbiting our Sun, and helping to answer some of its secrets.
Solar Orbiter
What we’re talking about is the largest ever international study of our star, the Solar Orbiter, a European probe that will come closer to the sun than any of its predecessors, and hopefully yield information impossible to attain from Earth or from Earth orbit. The last solar orbiter, the Euro-American SOHO, has already outlived its lifespan by three times, so this project means the next generation solar probe. What it will bring to science and to popular understanding, and what Czech science can bring to it, is a question best put to Dr František Fárník, the head of the solar department of the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
