The rods of the sun can contain answers to long -term secrets about magnetycles, sun wind and space weather.
The polar regions of the sun remain one of the least researched areas in solar studies. Although satellites and floor base have recorded remarkable details of the sun surface, the atmosphere and the magnetic field, almost all of these views come from the ecliptic level, the narrow orbital path, followed by earth and most other planets.
This restricted perspective means that scientists only have limited knowledge of what is near the sun's. However, these regions are critical. Their magnetic fields and their dynamic activity are centrally in the solar tag cycle and offer both mass and energy for the fast sun wind. Ultimately, these processes form the sun behavior and influence the room weather that can reach the earth.
Why the Poles are important
The poles may appear calm on the surface compared to the more active medium brakes in the sun (about ± 35 °), where sun spots, solar torches and coronal masses (CMES) are common. However, investigations show that polar magnetic fields contribute directly to the global solar dynamo and serve as the basis for the next sun cycle by determining the dipol magnetic field of the sun. Observations from the Ulysses mission also showed that the fast sun wind mainly comes from huge coronal holes in the polar regions. For this reason, it is essential to answer three most fundamental questions in solar physics:
1) How does the Solardynamo work and drive the sun -making cycle?
The solar tag cycle refers to the periodic variation of the number of sunspots on the sun surface, typically on a time scale of approximately 11 years. During each cycle, the magnetic poles of the sun are reversed, with the magnetic polarities of the north and south poles change.
The global magnetic fields of the sun are generated by a dynamo process. The key to this process is the differential rotation of the sun that creates the active regions, and the meridional cycle, which transports the magnetic river towards the poles. However, decades of heliosismic studies have shown contradictory results on the river patterns deep in the convection zone.
Some studies even point to the base of the convection zone that question the classic Dynamo models. Observations with high width of the magnetic fields and plasma Applications could provide the lack of evidence of refining or reconsidering these models.
2) What drives the fast sun wind?
The fast sun wind – an overs sound flow of loaded particles – comes mainly from the polar coronal holes and penetrates most of the heliosphome volume, which dominates the physical environment of the interplanetary space.
However, critical details about the origin of this wind remain unsolved. Does the wind correspond to dense springs in coronal holes or from the less dense regions between them? Are wave -oriented processes, magnetic re -connection or a combination of both responsible persons responsible for the acceleration of the plasma in the wind? Direct polar imaging and in-situ measurements are required to pay the debate.
3) How do room weather events spread through the solar system?
The heliosphetic space weather refers to the disorders in the heliosphreak environment, which are caused by the sun wind and the solar eruptive activities. Extreme space weather events such as large solar and CME can significantly trigger space environmental disorders such as severe geomagnetic and ionosphare storms as well as spectacular aurora phenomena and represent a serious threat to the safety of high-tech activities of humans.
In order to precisely predict these events, scientists have to track how magnetic structures and plasma flows develop worldwide, not only from the limited ecliptic view. Observations from the viewpoint of the ecliptic would provide an overlook of the CME propagation in the ecliptic level.
Past efforts
Scientists have long recognized the importance of solar polar observations. Ulysses's mission, which was introduced in 1990, was the first spaceship to leave the ecliptic level and tried the sunwind over the poles. The in-situ instruments confirmed the most important properties of fast sun wind, but lacked imaging. In recent times the European space agencyThe solar orbiter has gradually moved from the ecliptic level and is expected to reach widths of around 34 ° in a few years. Although this is a remarkable progress, it is still far behind the Vantage, which is required for a real polar perspective.
In recent decades, a number of ambitious mission concepts have been proposed, including the Solar Polar Imager (SPI), the Polar Investigation of the Sonne (Polaris), the Solar Polar Orbit Telescope (Sport), the Solaris Mission and the High Tendency Solar Mission (HISM). Some introduced themselves to use an advanced drive such as solar sails to achieve high tendencies. Others were based on gravity that incrementally tilted their orbits. Each of these missions would wear both remote sensing and in-situ instruments to present the poles of the sun and measure the most important physical parameters over the poles.
The SPO mission
The Solar Polar Orbit Observatory (SPO) was specially developed to overcome the restrictions on the past and current missions. Spo for the start in January 2029 will use A Jupiter Heavy power assistant (JGA) to bend his trajectory from the ecliptic level. After several earth flyers and a carefully planned encounter with Jupiter, the spaceship will settle in a 1.5-year orbit with a perihelia of about 1 AU and a tendency of up to 75 °. In its extensive mission, Spo was able to climb to 80 °, which offers the most direct view of the poles ever reached.
The 15-year life of the mission (including an 8-year long mission period) will enable him to cover both the minimum and maximum of solar, including the decisive period around 2035, when the next solar maximum and the expected polar magnetic field reverse occurs. During the entire life, SPO is repeatedly transferred to both poles, with the observation windows with a high width lasting more than 1000 days.
The SPO mission aims at breakthroughs on the three scientific questions mentioned above. In order to achieve his ambitious goals, SPO will have a number of several remote sensing and in-situ instruments. Together they offer a comprehensive view of the rods of the sun. The remote-sensing instruments include the magnetic and heliiusmic Imager (mhi) to Measure Magnetic Fields and plasma flows at the surface, the extreme ultraviolet telescope (eut) and the x-ray imaging telescope (xit) to capture dynamic in the solar upper atmosphere Visible-light coronagraph (Viscor) and the very large angle coronagraph (vlacor) to track the solar corona and solar windflows up to 45 sun radii (at 1 AU). The in-situ package contains a magnetometer and particle detectors to try the sun wind and the interplanetary magnetic field directly. With the combination of these observations, Spo not only catches up pictures of the poles for the first time, but also connects them to the rivers of plasma and magnetic energy that form the heliosphere.
SPO will not work in isolation. It is expected that it is working with a growing fleet of solar riots. This includes the stereo mission that Hinode Satellites that Solardynamic Observatory (Sdo), the interface region imaging spectrograph (Iris), the Advanced Space Based Solar Observatory (ASO-S), the Solar Orbiter, the Aditya-L1 mission, the punch mission and the upcoming L5 missions (e.g. EG, Esas Vigil Mission and Chinas Lavso mission). Together, these assets form an unprecedented observation network. Spos Polar Vantage offers the missing piece and enables an almost global 4π cover of the sun for the first time in the history of mankind.
Look ahead
The sun remains our closest star, but in many ways it is still a mystery. With Spo, scientists are ready to unlock some of his deepest secrets. The solar polar regions that were once hidden will finally come into focus and redesign our understanding of the star that supports life on earth.
The effects of SPO go far beyond academic curiosity. A deeper understanding of the sun dynamo could improve the predictions of the sun cycle, which in turn influences the room weather forecasts. Insights in the fast sun winds improve our ability to model the heliosphetic environment that are of crucial importance for the design of space vehicles and the safety of astronauts. The most important thing is that better surveillance of space weather events could help protect modern technological infrastructure – from navigation and communication satellites to aviation and terrestrial power supply systems.
Reference: “Proving Solar Polar Regions” by Yuanyong Deng, Hui Tian, Jie Jianang, Shuhong Yang, Hao Li, Robert Cameron, Laurent Gizon, Louise Harra, Robert F. Wimmer-Schweingruber, Frédéric Ahrère, Xianong Bai, Luis Rubio Bellot, Linjie Chen, Pengfei Chen, Lakshmi Pradeep Chitta, Jackie Davies, Fabio Favata, Li Feng, Xueshang Feng, Weiqun Gan, Don Hassler, Jiansen He, Junfeng Hou, Zhenyong Hou, Chunlan Jin, Wenya Li, Jiaben Lin, Dibyendu Nandy, Vaibhav Pant, Marco Romoli, Taro Sakao, Sayamanthula Krishna Prasad, Fang Shen, Yang Su, Shin Toriumi, Durgesh Tripathi, Linghua Wang, Jingjing Wang, Lidong Xia, Ming Xiong, Yihua Yan, Liping Yang, Shanghai Yang, Mei Zhang, Guiping Zho, Xiaoshuai Zhu, Jingxiu Wang and Chi Wang, August 29, 2025, Chinese Journal of Space Science.
Two: 10.11728/CJSS2025.04.2025-0054
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