The Solar Orbiter spacecraft, a joint mission between the European Space Agency and NASA, is the first to venture into a ...

That is because Earth, the other solar system planets, and all other modern spacecraft orbit the sun in a flat disc around it called the "ecliptic plane." This European Space Agency (ESA) sun-orbiting ...

The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter spacecraft returns first-ever data of the Sun collected from a 17-degree tilted ...

The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter captured the first-ever images of the sun's south pole in March, which were released this week.

For folks in the United States, July evenings mean 4th of July fireworks. While you're waiting for the show, be sure to watch ...

Escaping the ecliptic plane takes some doing, by which I mean a lot of very expensive rocket fuel. The Solar Orbiter used Venus's gravity to help pull it out of the usual equatorial orbit around ...

Solar Orbiter used momentum from its flyby of Venus on February 18 to push itself out of the ecliptic plane that contains Earth’s orbit around the Sun. Around a month later, the spacecraft was ...

We Earthlings see the sun every day of our lives—but gaining a truly new view of our star is a rare and precious thing. So ...

In the coming years, the spacecraft will climb further out of the ecliptic plane for ever better views of the sun's polar regions," ESA’s Solar Orbiter project scientist Daniel Müller said.