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As the Solar Orbiter spacecraft is scheduled for launch this month, European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA Project Scientists provide an overview of this major ESA–NASA mission to the Sun.
Soon after Einstein’s calculation of the effect of the Sun’s gravitational field on the propagation of light in 1911, astronomers around the world tried to measure and verify the value. If the first attempts in Brazil in 1912 or Imperial Russia in 1914 had been successful, they would have proven Einstein wrong.
Black hole feeding and feedback are often studied disjointly in both observations and simulations. We encourage the adoption of three physically motivated scales, linking them in a tight multiphase self-regulated loop. We pinpoint the key open questions of this unification problem and advocate for a multiwavelength, multiscale and interdisciplinary community.
Planets and their systems have long held the spotlight, but researchers, space agencies and even the private sector and the public have turned their attention to small bodies.
