Solar Orbiter spacecraft captures Venus glare

New footage has been released showing glare from Venus. The image was captured by the Solar Orbiter spacecraft on its second flyby of the planet. This is the moment Solar Orbiter passed Venus earlier this month. The images show a dark area of the planet which is hidden from the Sun and a bright crescent of light – glare from Venus' incredibly bright sunlit side. The footage was filmed by the Solar Orbiter Heliospheric Imager, SoloHI, as the spacecraft made its second flyby of the planet, coming to within 7,995 kilometres of the surface. Solar Orbiter is a collaboration between the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA. It was launched in February 2020. The spacecraft's mission is to observe the Sun's polar regions. It uses Venus' gravity to bring it closer to our star and to change its orbit to get a different view. It is scheduled to make an Earth flyby in November and six more Venus flybys between 2022 to 2030.