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HOWARD COUNTY, Maryland – Carrying a nearly 5-inch layer of carbon composite solar shields, NASA's Parker Solar Probe will explore the sun's atmosphere in a mission that is expected to be launched in early August.
"The spacecraft is buttoned, handsome and ready for the flight," said Nicola Fox, scientist of the Parker Solar Probe project at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, at a NASA conference. press conference Friday.
The launch window opens on August 6th between 4am and 6am EST and ends on August 19th. If all goes as planned, the probe will be launched on August 6 at Cape Canaveral on a Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket, one of the most powerful rockets in the world. Although the probe is about the size of a car, a powerful rocket is needed to escape the Earth's orbit, change direction and reach the sun.
The two week window was chosen because the probe will use Venus to help it. reach an orbit around the sun. Six weeks after the launch, the probe will meet Venus for the first time. It will be used to help slow down the probe, such as pulling a handbrake, to steer the probe so that it is on a path to the sun.
"The launch energy to reach the Sun is 55 times greater than that required for Mars," said Yanping Guo of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, who designed the trajectory of the mission. Summer, the Earth and the other planets of our solar system are in the most favorable alignment to bring us closer to the Sun. "
This is not a trip that any human can do, so NASA sends about 10 NASA's Solar Probe Plus mission will set out to explore the sun's atmosphere in the summer of 2018.
CREDIT: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab / NASA
The spacecraft will have to withstand the heat and radiation never seen before by a spacecraft, but the specially designed mission will also answer questions that it was not possible to answer before. , understand the sun in more detail can also illuminate the Earth and its place in the solar system.
"We've been studying the sun for decades, and now we're finally going to go where the action is," said Alex Young, a solar scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
. Machine – initially called Solar Probe Plus – was renamed Parker Solar Probe in the honor of the astrophysicist Eugene Parker
. The first time, NASA has named a spacecraft for a living individual, "said Thomas Zurbuchen, badociate director of the agency's scientific missions branch in Washington. "This testifies to the importance of his work, by founding a new scientific field that has also inspired my own research and many important scientific issues that NASA continues to study and understand better every day. I am very excited to be personally involved in honoring a great man and his unprecedented legacy. "
Parker published research predicting the existence of the solar wind in 1958, when he was a young professor at the Enrico Fermi Institute of the University of Chicago." At the time, the astronomers believed that the space between the planets was a void: Parker's first article was rejected, but it was saved by a colleague, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, an astrophysicist who would receive the Nobel Prize in physics in 1983.
Less than two years after the publication of Parker's article, his theory of the solar wind was confirmed by satellite observations.His work has revolutionized our understanding of the sun and interplanetary space.
Parker is now eminent Professor S. Chandrasekhar emeritus professor at the University of Chicago Zurbuchen and Parker Solar Probe missionary project scientist Nicola Fox also presented to Parker the first model of the NASA and the prestigious NASA Public Service Medal
"I am very honored to be badociated with such a heroic scientific space" Parker says, "Parker's Solar Probe will carry a chip with pictures of Parker and from his groundbreaking paper, as well as a plaque bearing the inscription that Parker wants to provide: his message to the sun
will eventually be in orbit within 3.7 million miles of the sun's surface. Although it sounds far, the researchers equate this with the probe sitting on the 4-yard line of a football field and the sun being the end zone.
The observations and data could provide insight into the physics of the stars, change what we know about the mysterious crown, increase the understanding of the solar wind and help improve the forecast major space weather events. These events can affect satellites and astronauts as well as the Earth – including the power grid and radiation exposure on air flights, says NASA
The mission's goals are to track the flow of 39, solar energy. , determining the structure and dynamics of plasma and magnetic fields at solar wind sources and exploring mechanisms that accelerate and transport energetic particles. "
" We've been in the orbit of Mercury and have done amazing things, but until you go to the sun, you can not answer those questions, "Fox said. Why did it take us 60 years? Materials did not exist to allow us to do this. We had to make a heat shield, and we like it. Something that can withstand the extreme temperature changes of its 24 orbits is revolutionary. "
The solar wind is the flow of sun-laden gas that is present in most of the solar system.This wind shouts beyond the Earth at a million miles per hour, and the disturbances of the solar wind cause space disturbances that affect our planet.
The space weather may not look like the Earth. estimated that a solar event without warning could cause $ 2 trillion in damage to the United States. United and leave parts of the country without electricity for a year.
In order to reach orbit around the sun, Parker's solar probe will take seven overflights of Venus which will essentially give the probe a gravitational badist, narrowing its orbiting the sun for nearly seven years.
The probe will eventually be closer to the sun than Mercury, and will be close enough to watch the solar wind shift from subsonic to supersonic.
Qua nd closest to the sun, the carbon-composite solar shields of 4½-inch thickness of the probe will have to withstand temperatures close to 2500 degrees Fahrenheit. Because of its design, the interior of the spacecraft and its instruments will remain at a comfortable ambient temperature.
Four instrument suites will gather the data needed to answer key questions about the sun. FIELDS will measure the electrical and magnetic waves around the probe, WISPR will take images, SWEAP will count the charged particles and measure their properties and ISOIS will measure the particles over a wide spectrum.
The probe will reach a speed of 450,000 mph around the Sun. On Earth, this speed would allow someone to travel from Philadelphia to Washington in a second, the agency said. The mission will also go through the origin of solar particles with the highest energy.
The mission is scheduled to end in June 2025.
"The solar probe is heading for a region of space that has never been explored before," Parker said. "It's very exciting that we're finally going to take a look at it.We would like to have more detailed measurements of what's going on in the solar wind.I am sure there will be surprises Meme it There are always some. "
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