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TORONTO -- A new spacecraft set to launch this weekend is going to be travelling closer to the sun's poles than ever before on a special mission to photograph the star, according to NASA.

The Solar Orbiter probe will be setting off Sunday with the aim of capturing the first images of our sun鈥檚 north and south poles.

The mission, run in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA), is aimed at learning more about solar winds, according to Paul Delaney, professor of Physics and Astronomy at York University.

鈥淪olar wind is basically charged particles that are streaming off the sun throughout the solar system,鈥� he explained on CTV鈥檚 Your Morning Friday.

While solar winds can give us sights such as the aurora borealis -- also known as the Northern Lights -- it鈥檚 not always beautiful when they interact with the Earth and the Earth鈥檚 magnetic fields. If a gust of solar wind becomes less of a wind and more of a gale, Delaney said, these charged particles are capable of overwhelming our satellite systems.

Satellite systems are responsible for GPS, cellphone service, TV signals and even search and rescue coordination, so it鈥檚 no small matter if a satellite is impacted by solar winds.

The winds can also create dangerous conditions for astronauts in orbit, 鈥渙r future space tourists,鈥� he pointed out.

The ultimate consequence is a geomagnetic storm like the ones in 1989, he said, which knocked out 鈥減ower grids across the planet.

鈥淵ou take out the satellites of this planet, and yours and I鈥檚 lives would be very different. You鈥檇 be thrown back 100 years. Personally, I like my current existence of technology.鈥�

But it鈥檚 not easy to get a probe close to the sun鈥檚 poles.

鈥淢ost of the probes that we launch in our solar system stay in what we call the ecliptic plane 鈥� so in the same plane that the Earth orbits around the sun,鈥� Delaney explained. 鈥淭o get out of that plane requires a lot of energy.鈥�

In order to build up that energy, the probe will be using Earth and Venus as a sort of 鈥渃atapult.鈥� By slingshotting around the two planets, over and underneath the sun, the Solar Orbiter will be able to use them 鈥渁s a gravitational anchor,鈥� to pull itself closer to the sun.

The mission will take seven years, . At its closest pass by the sun, the spacecraft will be within 42 million kilometres of the surface -- and while that might sound like a vast distance, the Earth is roughly 147 million kilometres from the sun, meaning the probe will be around three times closer to the star than we are now.

The last spacecraft to fly over the sun's poles was another joint ESA and NASA venture, the Ulysses mission, which launched in 1990 and was decommissioned in 2009. But according to NASA, Ulysses never got any closer to the sun than the Earth does, and didn鈥檛 have any cameras onboard.

Solar Orbiter will also work with another probe studying the sun -- Parker Solar Probe, which was launched in 2018 and has completed four close solar passes on the ecliptic plane.

Delaney said that, on a scale of one to ten, he is 鈥渆ight plus鈥� excited about this mission.

鈥淲e don鈥檛 get these probes coming around very often,鈥� he said. 鈥淜nowing how the sun is operating and protecting ourselves in the event that something is going to happen 鈥� that鈥檚 rather important to modern civilization.鈥�