Solar Orbiter blasts off in mission to the sun

A joint US-European team successfully launched the Space Orbiter space probe on Sunday night from Florida.

Space Orbiter blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral atop an Atlas V411 rocket.

US space agency NASA and European Space Agency (ESA), are collaborating on the mission,

which will be controlled from the European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany.

"By the end of the mission, we will know more about the hidden force responsible for the sun's changing behavior and its influence on our home planet and how powerful solar storms could disrupt everyday life."- European Space Agency