Solar Orbiter traces solar wind back to its mysterious source for 1st time

An illustration of the sun is in the background. In front of the sun, there's a solar-winged spacecraft.

The European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter has, for the first time, traced the solar wind in space to a specific location on our sun's surface, opening a new way to study the origins of solar winds, scientists reported on Tuesday (May 28).

"This was a key objective of the mission and opens the way for us to study the solar wind's origin in unprecedented detail," Daniel Müller, the ESA project scientist for Solar Orbiter, said in a statement.