Well this is exciting news. Solar observation has always been a favourite subject of mine. So when a couple of days ago ESA announced that it was planning a VERY ambitious program called the Solar Orbiter it was big news. Today NASA announced that it would be collaborating with the ESA on this project. NASA will be providing two of the spacecraft's instruments.
The orbiter is going far closer to the Sun than any previous spacecraft and will be tasked with studying the surface, the magnetic field and the solar wind. Here's the exiting part "Being so close to the sun also means that the Solar Orbiter will stay over a given area of the solar surface for a longer time, allowing the instruments to track the evolution of sunspots, active regions, coronal holes and other solar activity far longer than has been done before.". Hopefully, that's something that should greatly increase our understanding of the Sunspots, CMEs, Flares, and other solar phenomenon. Much of the mechanics of the Solar Wind and CMEs are still complete mysteries to us.
The probe is also going to get full views of the Sun's magnetic poles. Something that has not been done before.
The spacecraft will have to face temperatures exceeding 500 degrees so will have to have considerable shielding. Anyone seen the film Sunshine? Well, not that much shielding ;-)
The Solar Orbiter is due to launch in 2017.
More on the
BBC here and on NASA
here
