The Helios Missions

  • Released Thursday, April 4, 2019
  • ID: 4703

A view of the orbits of Helios A & Helios B (aka Helios 1 & Helios 2) looking oblliquely from above the ecliptic plane.

In the days before Parker Solar Probe (PSP), the previous record-breaking spacecraft for speed and closest distance to the Sun were the two Helios probes, launched in the mid-1970s. Now with PSP re-entering the environment inward of the orbit of Mercury, data from these probes is being re-examined with newer tools and compared to the newer data.

A view of the orbits of Helios A & Helios B (aka Helios 1 & Helios 2) looking down from the ecliptic pole.

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio

Missions

This visualization is related to the following missions:

Datasets used in this visualization

DE 431
EphemerisJPL

Planetary ephemerides SPICE kernel

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JPL/Horizon Orbital Ephemerides
EphemerisNASA/JPL1974-12-10T23:51:00 to 1981-09-30T01:29:00

Planetary ephemerides

Dataset can be found at: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/?horizons

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Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details nor the data sets themselves on our site.

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