Coronal Diagnostic Spectrometer at Imperial College
These pages provide information about the SOHO mission. The SOHO mission is designed to address some of the outstanding questions in solar physics.

SOHO mission goals

The major goals of the SOHO mission are:

i) to investigate the nature of the solar corona and the mechanism of coronal heating,

ii) to investigate the acceleration of the solar wind, and

iii) to investigate the internal structure of the Sun.

SOHO launch and orbit

SOHO orbit

Figure 1: SOHO trajectory and orbit (courtesy R. A. Harrison).

SOHO was launched on 2nd December 1995, which was followed by a two month cruise to its final destination, the L1 point, where it was injected into a halo orbit (see Figure 1), on the 14th February. The nominal lifetime of the mission is currently two years, with a possible four years of operation after this, depending on instrument reliability. The spacecraft will be operated from the Goddard Space Flight Centre (GSFC), where there will be an Experiment Operations Facility (EOF).

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This page last updated 11th September 1996.