Solar Orbiter Venus Flyby

Solar Orbiter, a partnership between ESA and NASA, will perform a gravity assist maneuver with Venus with its closest approach at a distance of 6400 km. Throughout its mission it also makes repeated gravity assist flybys of Venus to get closer to the Sun, and to change its orbital inclination, boosting it out of the ecliptic plane, to get the best – and first – views of the Sun’s poles.