NASA's STEREO-A Completes 17-Year Sun Orbit, Flies by Earth

NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory-A (STEREO-A) spacecraft, which launched in 2006, has completed a 17-year journey around the sun and recently passed between the sun and Earth for the first time since its launch. STEREO-A, along with its lost sibling STEREO-B, provided groundbreaking research on the sun by capturing a 360-degree view and studying coronal mass ejections. Despite temporarily losing contact with NASA in 2015, STEREO-A has returned to Earth's vicinity and will continue to contribute to solar research with the help of newer NASA satellites.