NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

SOHO Celebrates 1,500th Comet Discovery

It’s the most successful comet catcher in history. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft has just reached a new milestone. It has discovered its 1,500th comet, making it more successful than all the other discoverers of comets throughout history put together. Not bad for a spacecraft that was designed as a solar physics mission.

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SOHO Mission
The SOHO (Solar & Heliospheric Observatory) project is a cooperative effort between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA. SOHO was designed to study the internal structure of the Sun, its extensive outer atmosphere and the origin of the solar wind, the stream of highly ionized gas that blows continuously outward through the Solar System.

SOHO was launched on December 2, 1995. The SOHO spacecraft was built in Europe by an industry team led by Matra, and instruments were provided by European and American scientists. NASA was responsible for the launch and is now responsible for mission operations. Large radio dishes around the world which form NASA's Deep Space Network are used to track the spacecraft beyond the Earth's orbit. Mission control is based at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.