ESA’s vessel Solar Orbiter (SolO) lifted off the earth yesterday, and the idea is to examine our big star a little closer in the coming years.

SolO is developed by the European Space Agency ESA in collaboration with its US counterpart NASA and the idea is that the vessel will observe different properties of the sun and how these affect our solar system.

The journey to the sun is expected to take about 3.5 years and, as of now, SolO will fly past the sun at a distance of 42 million kilometers. In total, SolO has cost about 1.5 billion euros to develop, of which ESA’s accounted for most of the cost.

If you jump up to the 29th minute in the clip below, you can see what it looked like when SolO lifted to the sun using one of the United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rockets.