Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)

Credit: Artist's rendition of the SOHO satellite. Credit: NASA
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Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) -- The SOHO (Solar & Heliospheric Observatory) project is being carried out by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as a cooperative effort between the two agencies in the framework of the Solar Terrestrial Science Program (STSP) comprising SOHO and CLUSTER, and the International Solar-Terrestrial Physics Program (ISTP), with Geotail (ISAS-Japan), Wind, and Polar.

SOHO was launched on December 2, 1995. The SOHO spacecraft was built in Europe by an industry team led by Matra, and instruments were provided by European and American scientists.

There are nine European Principal Investigators (PI's) and three American ones. Large engineering teams and more than 200 co-investigators from many institutions supported the PI's in the development of the instruments and in the preparation of their operations and data analysis.

NASA was responsible for the launch and is now responsible for mission operations. Large radio dishes around the world which form NASA's Deep Space Network are used to track the spacecraft beyond the Earth's orbit.

Mission control is based at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

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Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)

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