In December 2004, the Voyager 1 probe passed through a shock front that is thought to be part of the heliopause.
In the 1970s, Helios 1 and the Skylab Apollo Telescope Mount provided scientists with significant new data on solar wind and the solar corona.
The Helios 1 satellite was a joint U.S. German probe that studied the solar wind from an orbit carrying the spacecraft inside Mercury's orbit at perihelion.