NASA celebrates 20 years of SOHO in space with stunning video – Watch

Photo credits: NASAESA/NASA/SOHO

Washington: The US space agency NASA is celebrating 20 years of the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) in space on Wednesday, 2 December.

Launched on 2 December 1995 to study the sun, the observatory revolutionised this field of science, known as heliophysics, providing the basis for nearly 5,000 scientific papers.

The spacecraft has captured a number of detailed images of the sun allowing scientists to monitor changes in solar energy, solar wind, and more.

To mark the occasion, NASA has released a stunning video featuring highlights from SOHO's 20 years in space. Watch the video here-

Video credit: NASA Goddard/YouTube

SOHO also found an unexpected role as the greatest comet hunter of all time - reaching 3,000 comet discoveries in September 2015.

“SOHO changed the popular view of the sun from a picture of a static, unchanging object in the sky to the dynamic beast it is,” Bernhard Fleck, ESA SOHO project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in a press release.

It is a joint project of international cooperation between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA.

The mission, which was originally planned for only two years, received approval to carry on until 2016.