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On February 16, the EUI/FSI telescope on Solar Orbiter has observed an impressively large prominence eruption, and traced it up to 6 solar radii, as it was as large as the Sun itself. This type of event can have consequences on technological applications (loss of satellites, degradation of the GPS signal, etc.)
The PARADISE Scientific Interest Group (Platforms for Applied Research and Development Activities in Ground and on board Instrumentation) will join the very closed club of National Research Infrastructures in spring 2022 during the roadmap update process initiated in early 2021. IAS is a founding member of the GIS and has been leading it since its creation in 2017.
Water-rock interactions are essential in the formation of planets, especially that of the Earth. In fact, the origin of water in solar system objects has always been extensively studied. The isotopic composition of the hydrogen and oxygen atoms that compose the water molecule is in particular a key tracer of its sources. The hydrogen isotopic composition of the water of telluric planetary objects is intermediate between that of interstellar water very rich in deuterium and that of hydrogen gas depleted in deuterium by nuclear reactions in stars.
For a mission that has just entered its scientific exploitation phase, Solar Orbiter has already produced many remarkable results. A recent special issue of Astronomy and Astrophysics brings together a multitude of studies and observations obtained during the mission's cruise phase. No less than 56 papers have been published, each containing data produced by one or several Solar Orbiter instruments, in which many laboratories including IAS have been strongly involved.
The first analyzes of the samples collected from the primitive asteroid Ryugu, to which contribute the MicrOmega instrument developed at IAS, provided a first characterization of the physical and chemical properties of the grains.
