SOHO is 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.
			SOlar and Heliospheric Observatory
	Type		SOHO is a three-axis stabilised spacecraft. It is made up of two modules: the Service Module that provides power, control, pointing and telecommunications for the whole spacecraft and support for the solar panels, and the Payload Module that houses all the scientific instruments.
	Mass		total at launch 1850 kg payload 610 kg
	Size		breadth and width: 3.65 x 3.65 m, span withsolar array deployed 9.5 m
	CDS		Coronal Diagnostics Spectrometer Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, United Kingdom
	CELIAS		Charge, Element, and Isotope Analysis System Universitat Bern, Switzerland
	COSTEP		Comprehensive Suprathermal and Energetic Particle Analyzer University of Kiel, Germany
	EIT		Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, USA
	ERNE		Energetic and Relativistic Nuclei and Electron experiment University of Turku, Finland
	GOLF		Global Oscillations at Low Frequencies Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale, France
	LASCO		Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph Naval Research Laboratory, USA
	MDI/SOI		Michelson Doppler Imager/Solar Oscillations Investigation Stanford University, USA
	SUMER		Solar Ultraviolet Measurements of Emitted Radiation Max-Planck-Institut fur Aeronomie, Germany
	SWAN		Solar Wind Anisotropies FMI, Finland, Service d'Aeronomie, France
	UVCS		Ultraviolet Coronagraph Spectrometer Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, USA
	VIRGO		Variability of Solar Irradiance and Gravity Oscillations) VIRGO from ESTEC, The NEtherlands
	Date		Cape Canaveral, 2 December 1995
	Vehicle		Atlas-IIAS
			SOHO is operated from a permanent vantage point 1.5 million kilometers sunward of the Earth in a halo orbit around the L1 Lagrangian point.
			SOHO was designed to observe the Sun continuously for at least two years, but is still observing!SOHO is commanded from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in Greenbelt, Maryland (USA). Its data will are retrieved via the NASA Deep Space Network (DSN).