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The infobox claims the "Altitude" is 3,340,000 km (2,080,000 mi). This cannot be correct, as it would place it only about 0.026 AU from the Sun's center, ~37X closer than Earth. I guess I will just go ahead and change it to the perihelion distance, minus the solar radius. Except I see I apparently do not know how to use the infobox. But what I have done effectively deletes the altitude from the box, so I'll just leave it for someone else to fix. Wwheaton (talk) 23:41, 12 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
thanks. Perhaps we could have a History section and/or Current status. History could, eg. say when and why the launch was changed from 2017 to 2019. Current status (could be a final subsection in History) could say how funding request, build, test, flight is proceeding ? - Rod57 (talk) 17:11, 30 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Is the power listed in the infobox correct? It says 180 W, which seems very low given the images (implied size of the solar arrays) and the distance from the Sun. The reference is trying to be facts sheet on an ESA web page, but the link is broken. The facts sheet I could find didn't list the power. Fcrary (talk) 00:23, 12 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
A previous mission to the Sun required the use of Jupiter and exploitation of the slingshot-effect. There is no mention of Jupiter here. Was such a detail omitted, or has there been an increase in available rocket launch velocity? This would be interesting to know. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.2.156.175 (talk) 12:44, 20 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
You seem to be thinking of Ulysses of 1980. That did indeed use a gravitational slingshot by Jupiter to achieve a polar orbit around the Sun. It took years to get to the Sun for the first time, and the resulting orbit continued to take it out as far as Jupiter's orbit. The Solar Orbiter will not to out to Jupiter. It will use a couple of gravitational assists (slingshots) from Venus, and one from Earth, to achieve its initial orbit. That initial orbit is designed so that it will encounter Venus regularly. Then over several years, it will get several more gravitational assists from Venus to tilt its orbit farther and farther away from the Sun's equator and closer and closer to its poles.
Ulysses was launched by the Space Shuttle, and had further rockets behind it to send it to Jupiter. That didn't happen with the Solar Orbiter, of course. So it's difficult to compare the powers of the launch. Uporządnicki (talk) 15:11, 20 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
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Hi, ESA changed their website from <https://sci.esa.int/> to <https://www.esa.int> sometime after December 2020 and May 2021. The former site is no longer being maintained. I've just amended the Solar Observer page to reflect this - changed the 'website' in the main top-of-page box, and added new site to the External links part. Other links to old site will be ok for now because the old site is still in place - it's just not going to be updated in future (though I suppose, at some point, the old site may be deleted altogether).
This will impact lots of pages relating to ESA missions, right? So, should someone do some kind of global change, if such a thing is possible? (a 'bot'?). It's way beyond my expertise! I just thought I'd float the boat.