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ESA / NASA · 1995 — 2025

Thirty years
at the edge
of the Sun.

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory has watched our star without pause from the L1 Lagrange point — through coronal mass ejections, near-loss in 1998, helioseismic revelations, and more than five thousand comets.

Launch
Dec 2, 1995
Orbit
Sun–Earth L1
Instruments
12
Status
Operating
0 Years of operation
0 Comets discovered
0 Scientific publications
0 Doctorate theses
Interactive timeline

From launch to legacy.

Filter by category. Click any milestone for the full story, image, and source links. Approximate dates are labeled as such.

Sources

Built on primary mission record.

Every dated fact on this page is drawn from the ESA and NASA pages below. Visit the originals for instrument-level detail, daily recovery logs, and the live Sungrazer Project.