The baseline launch date for Solar Orbiter is less than a year away. This mission will explore inner heliosphere to determine the links between activity in the magnetic field-dominated regime of the solar corona and their consequences in the particle-dominated regime of the interplanetary medium. These links will be revealed by making observations of the Sun with a complement of powerful, high-resolution optical instruments, together with those from state-of-the-art instruments which sample, in situ, the properties, dynamics and interactions of fields and particles in the near-Sun heliosphere. These plasma and field instruments also have high temporal resolutions, and offer unique possibilities for resolving plasma kinetic processes in the solar wind at small scales.

To achieve the mission science goals, high-cadence measurements of 3D velocity distribution functions of solar wind electron, proton and alpha particle populations are required, together with abundant heavy ions such as O6+ and ion charge states such as Fe9+ or Fe10+. These measurements will be made by the Solar Wind Analyser (SWA) suite, which is part funded and led by the UK (P.I. Institute: UCL/MSSL).

Given the planned February 2020 launch, it is perhaps timely to remind the community of the opportunities that Solar Orbiter will bring. In this poster we briefly review the mission science goals related to the in situ exploration of the inner heliosphere. We discuss the SWA sensors, the data products we expect to return and the operations planning which will ensure we meet the science goals.