On this day in space! Dec. 2, 1995: NASA launches SOHO sun-watching satellite

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On Dec. 2, 1995, NASA launched the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, also known as SOHO.

On Dec. 2, 1995, NASA launched the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, also known as SOHO. This sun-monitoring satellite is a collaborative project between NASA and the European Space Agency that has been operational for more than 20 years.

SOHO was launched by an Atlas II-AS (AC-121) from Cape Canaveral Air Station (today Cape Canaveral Space Force Station) in Florida on Dec. 2, 1995 (Image credit: NASA)

The satellite launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on an Atlas II rocket and took about four months to reach its destination at the L1 Lagrange point, an area in space where the gravity of the sun and the Earth balance each other out.

On This Day in Space: See our full 365-day video archive!

Hanneke Weitering
Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos. 

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