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NASA is preparing to send a probe closer to the Sun than any other spacecraft, risking to endure the nasty heat while zooming in on the solar corona to study this outermost part of the stellar atmosphere that gives birth to the solar wind.
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 should fly into the Sun's crown at 6.8 million miles (6.1 million km) from the solar surface, seven times closer than any other spacecraft.
Technicians and engineers perform tests at Titusville's Parker solar probe. (Photo: Reuters)
"Send a probe where you've never been, it's ambitious, send it in such brutal conditions is very ambitious," Nicola Fox, researcher at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, said a press conference Friday.
The previous closest pbad of the Sun was made by a probe called Helios 2, which in 1976 came within 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 discoveries 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 time here on Earth," said Alex Young. scientist at Goddard Space Flight Center at NASA Maryland. "In the most extreme cases of these weather phenomena, it can affect our electrical networks on Earth."
The project, with a cost of $ 1.5 billion, is the first major mission of NASA's Living With a Star program.
The spacecraft should use seven Venus flyovers for nearly seven years to gradually reduce its orbit around the Sun, using instruments designed to image the solar wind and study electric and magnetic fields, coronal plasma and energetic particles . NASA aims to collect data on the inner workings of the highly magnetized crown
The probe, named after American astrophysicist Eugene Newman Parker, will have to survive difficult heat and radiation conditions. It has been equipped with a heat shield designed to maintain its instruments at an acceptable temperature of 85 degrees Fahrenheit (29 degrees Celsius), even when the spacecraft is facing temperatures of up to 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,390 degrees Fahrenheit). ° C).
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