when i studied in uni and when i started my career as a researcher i never
even in my wildest dreams thought that i would ever work on a space mission
hi everyone i work as a solar and space physicist and my specialty is studying solar storms
so big giant magnetic clouds that come from the sun and travels in the solar system
but i also work on a space mission and the space mission i'm working on is an isa and nasa joint
mission called solar orbiter and we launched solar orbiter back in february 2020 a few months back
and i happen to be super lucky and go and see the launch so i wanted to share a few a few
videos that i took when i went to see the launch but also a few months before when i
i was really lucky to go and see the spacecraft and the solar orbiter is basically going to get
closer and closer to the sun and collects data um under different forms so some of the data that
it's going to collect is going to be images from the sun so the closest we've ever taken them from
and other sort of data is what we call in-situ data which is basically um sort of data that is
collected collected around the spacecraft and so for me this is a really really interesting
mission because not only is it going to survey and look at the sun but it's also going to
look at everything that is coming from the sun and passing uh on the trajectory of the spacecraft and
solar storms do that so i'm really eager to learn more about solar storms with the solar orbiter mission
so it's been an interesting journey and i'm really happy to share that with you
i am today at iapg which is near munich in germany and this is a facility where solar orbiter our
spacecraft that you can see here in this picture and that we're going to see very very soon is
so what is iabg it's a facility that kind of recreates the conditions of first launch and space
so we're inside the facility right now we have to wear these ridiculous hats and um cover our
clothes as well as our shoes and everyone here is gathered so that we can see
the spacecraft so i'm going to try to point into the different parts of the spacecraft
you've got the remote sensing instruments here with all the different doors the thermal shield
is in black here you've got the antenna here the solar panels that are not deployed
so i work on different instruments on the mission especially one that's called spice spice is a
spectrograph which means that it analyzes the spectra of the light that comes from the sun
so we're in cocoa beach florida um and we have been having a two-day meeting
the science working team meeting where all the instrument teams gather in the
same room and discuss about what's going to happen with solar orbiter when the launch
is happening in a few days time so we are here and i just wanted to show you this thing that's
really really fun we have this solar orbiter meeting but we've been put in a mars room, weird
so we are two days away from the launch we are friday and we're launching currently on sunday
we had a few meetings we had the science working team with all the instrument teams together at
the beginning of the week and yesterday we had our team meeting so now all the work
part is over and up to the launch i will be doing a bit of outreach especially today i will be at a
kennedy space center so the visitor complex so i'm really excited to see the public coming in
and talk about solar orbiter i may also be at the ask a scientist booth and i will be
also presenting my virtual reality project that i've been working on for the last few months so
that's kind of kind of exciting to see to see it's being shown to the public i'm setting the course
i'm gonna go but i'm going to put on a playlist the isa communication team has made a playlist
on spotify especially for the solar orbital launch so i might put on donald summers hot stuff
bye so we're doing minus one day uh launch is tomorrow evening and we are at the kennedy
space center and this time we are next to the building where the sutton fire market is
and behind me is basically on the other side is where the launch pads are and especially
the launch pad from which solar orbiter is going to launch tomorrow evening so i think
we're going to view it from there so yeah it's really exciting to be here and i'm going to
go and see the saturn 5 and get inspired by all the apollo missions
so we are at least the saturn five rockets
huge
i have to say that it's been i think two nights in a row now that i haven't really slept much
i'm too excited i woke up this morning at like 5 a.m 6 a.m
7:30 8. and yeah i'm gonna feel like a little bit squeezing my stomach too excited
all right so i am in banana creek i don't know whether you can see behind but the launch pad
where solar orbiter is sitting on top of the atlas 5 rocket
is just behind me and i wanted to show you what is going on inside basically
the giant chopping knife happening underneath the second side it's a little bit crazy we are in the
four-minute built in hole if all goes well launch will occur about 16 minutes 42 seconds from now
28 seconds
25 status check go atlas go with siftar go solo orbiter liftoff release
system response looks good
vehicles now passing through max q maximum dynamic pressure and now coming up on two
minutes into flight the atlas v vehicle now weighs just one half of its liftoff weight
the trajectory of the launch was just in the direction of the full moon they were
to see a bow solar orbiter we could see it so clearly and the smoke um underneath
the rocket was eliminated by the by the moonlight yeah it was just um really emotional you know like
I was sitting with a bunch of people, especially some of the people who are working on the solar orbiter project itself
and yea just holding hands
and looking at our our spacecraft just being blast in space it was just a really really cool
fast launch and if i can get to see others then sign me up on it
so i hope you like the videos i had a lot of fun making them
and i hope it also shows you the excitement that even us as a scientist we can have of um
looking at our own mission being launched in space at the time i am recording this video there are
several steps that have been passed brilliantly the first one is what we call the commissioning
phase when we check that all the spacecrafts instruments as well as the spacecraft itself
are behaving okay and that happened in spring and so the interesting thing is it happened during
the covid 19 pandemic and when everyone was locked down solar orbiter is behaving well
and we got also the first images of solar orbiter which was really really exciting
and it showed the capabilities of all the instruments and we're still quite far from the sun
and it's just gonna get better and better we're gonna get even more and more interesting data as
we get closer to the sun but also as the sun is picking up a bit more activity as at the moment
the sun is relatively quiet um so we've got a few exciting years ahead and i hope i can
make more videos showing you um the data that solar orbiter is going to to give us if you
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