Smethport native Bart Barton, who previously worked on the Apollo 11 launch with his father, Bill Barton, captured quite a shot to add to his collection marking the U.S. space program — a picture of the Solar Orbiter launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 11:03 p.m. Sunday.
Barton snapped the picture near the pier in Cocoa Beach, Fla., where he was vacationing.
“I just happened to be staying at a hotel there, so I took out my tripod and took a picture. We went on vacation and were on our way back from Key West,” explained Barton.
When asked if it brought back memories from working with NASA, Barton reminisced about the Saturn V rocket on the Apollo 17 mission.
“It lit up the entire coast of Florida. It got delayed and didn’t go until very late at night, so it was probably the most impressive launch night they’ve ever had,” he said.
The Solar Orbiter pictured in Barton’s photo was a collaborative mission to study the sun between ESA (European Space Agency) and NASA.
“Solar Orbiter is on a unique trajectory that will allow its comprehensive set of instruments to provide humanity with the first-ever images of the Sun’s poles,” noted a press release from NASA. “This trajectory includes 22 close approaches to the Sun, bringing the spacecraft within the orbit of Mercury to study the Sun and its influence on space.”
“As humans, we have always been familiar with the importance of the Sun to life on Earth, observing it and investigating how it works in detail, but we have also long known it has the potential to disrupt everyday life should we be in the firing line of a powerful solar storm,” added Günther Hasinger, ESA director of Science.
Solar Orbiter will utilize in-situ instruments to measure the environment around the spacecraft and remote-sensing instruments to image the Sun, in addition to its atmosphere and outflow of material in an effort to better understand the inner-workings of the Sun.
By the end of the Solar Orbiter mission, Hasinger said the team will know more behind the “hidden force responsible for the Sun’s changing behavior and its influence on our home planet than ever before.”
