Speaker
Description
Solar Orbiter is currently the most comprehensive ESA-led heliophysics space mission to observe the Sun and the heliosphere. The Solar Orbiter ARchive (SOAR) contains more than 5 million unique science files measured by ten instruments aboard the spacecraft. These data include high-resolution remote-sensing observations - such as the closest EUV images of the Sun ever taken and the world-first observations of the solar poles. In addition, the data contains state-of-the-art in-situ measurements of solar particles and the electromagnetic field at the spacecraft site - which allows to link phenomena on the Sun with their impact on the inner solar system.
Over the last two years, the heliophysics archive team (composed of software developers and scientists) at ESA has developed a new Graphical User Interface (GUI) for the Solar Orbiter Archive within the multi-mission HelioPhysics Archive (HPA). This new HPA/SOAR GUI contains a comprehensive set of functionalities for the solar science community to search and explore the mission data. With the recent public release of HPA version 1.0 in June 2026, these functionalities have become now fully operational and include 1) advanced data search capabilities for searching by observation campaign, solar distance, or near real-time (“low-latency”) measurements of Solar Orbiter, 2) a new intuitive way of displaying search results in a graphical tree-view - organised by instrument, sensor, and data products, 3) data quick-look functionality and direct transfer of data products to external visualisation tools.
These features have been developed with an agile methodology - including frequent testing and feedback from the targeted user community and mission stakeholders. We present the key features of the operational HPA/SOAR - and reflect on main challenges and best practices during the development process.