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.
One of those twelve instruments — the Coronal Diagnostic Spectrometer — was built at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in England, and Brian Smith designed the mechanism that opened and closed its door in space. This is the mission his quiet work flew on. Read his story →
From launch to legacy.
Filter by category. Click any milestone for the full story, image, and source links. Approximate dates are labeled as such.
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.