NASA prepares to fly probe into the sun's hot atmosphere

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLORIDA – NASA is preparing to send a probe closer to the sun than any other spacecraft, enduring the nasty heat while zooming through the solar corona for study this outermost part of the stellar atmosphere. The Parker Solar Probe, a robotic spacecraft the size of a small car, is expected to be launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, August 6 being the launch date of the planned seven-year mission. It is expected to fly in the sun's crown within 6.1 million kilometers of the solar surface, seven times closer than any other spacecraft. "Sending a probe where you've never been is ambitious – sending it in such brutal conditions is very ambitious," said Nicola Fox, a project scientist at the Institute's Applied Physics Laboratory. Johns Hopkins University, at a press conference on Friday

. 2, which in 1976 came in 27 million miles (43 million km). For comparison, the average distance from the Sun to the Earth is 150 million kilometers.

The crown gives birth to the solar wind, a continuous stream of charged particles that permeates the solar system. The unpredictable solar winds cause disturbances in the magnetic field of our planet and can wreak havoc with the Earth's communication technology. NASA hopes that the results will enable scientists to predict changes in the Earth's space environment.

"It is fundamental for us to be able to predict this space time, just as we predict the weather here on Earth." Scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. "In most cases extreme of these meteorological phenomena, this can affect our power grids on Earth. "

The project, with a cost of $ 1.5 billion, is the first major mission of NASA's Living With a Star program. [19659002ThespacecraftshouldusesevenVenusoverflightsfornearlysevenyearstograduallyreduceitsorbitaroundthesunusinginstrumentsdesignedtoimagethesolarwindandstudyelectricandmagneticfieldscoronalplasmaandenergeticparticlesNASAaimstocollectdataontheinnerworkingsofthehighlymagnetizedcrown

The probe, named after the American astrophysicist Eugene Newman Pa rker, will have to survive difficult heat and radiation conditions. It was equipped with a heat shield designed to maintain its instruments at an acceptable temperature of 85 degrees Fahrenheit (29 degrees Celsius), even though the spacecraft faces temperatures reaching nearly 2500 F (1370 C) )