The Helios Missions

  • Released Thursday, April 4th, 2019
  • Updated Wednesday, November 15th, 2023 at 12:12AM
  • 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

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