One of the objectives of the Solar Orbiter mission is to quantify how the Sun creates
and controls the heliosphere. The spacecraft will observe the Sun with unprecedented temporal and spatial resolution and will sample the sparse, hot plasma that
flows from the Sun known as the solar wind. To succeed in its aim, Solar Orbiter
will require pointing of its remote sensing instruments to the region most likely to
produce solar wind, which will later be measured by the spacecraft. This is not
a small task, as it requires a combination of knowledge of the Sun, its magnetic field, solar wind dynamics, and a comprehensive verification of the results. In this
work, we have explored a methodology which enables a systematic comparison of
observations from the corona and the solar wind.
The first study presents, evaluates, and applies a method to compare coronal
observations to in situ measurements of the solar wind using Empirical Mode Decomposition. The second study compares coronal observations with solar wind
measurements made by spacecraft closer to the Sun. We compare Active Region
observations with the outflowing solar wind sampled at Solar Orbiter, and Coronal
Hole observations with solar wind reaching Parker Solar Probe, another spacecraft
that samples near Sun solar wind. The third and final study concentrates on the persistence of timescales within solar wind observations, where we study in situ data
from different spacecraft in radial alignment, at different distances from each other.
In each of these studies we successfully extract a correction factor to each of the
measured solar wind velocities, constructing a framework to investigate the origins
of individual solar wind streams, and the radial evolution of the solar wind protonvelocity. We conclude that, on a case-by-case basis, our technique can be applied to aid modelling efforts and explore the question of solar wind origins in greater
detail.