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Getting a boost from Jupiter. To learn more about the Sun, we need to investigate it from closer range and especially from above its polar regions, the last unexplored zones of the solar atmosphere. Present spacecraft propulsion devices are not adequate to send a craft directly over the solar poles, but it would be possible to launch a spacecraft from Earth out around Jupiter, whose powerful gravity can boost a spacecraft out of the plane of the planets' orbits and into a new trajectory that would send it racing over the Sun (picture below). This figure shows a mission concept involving two spacecraft, which would simultaneously explore the north and south poles of the Sun. |
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