Will Parker Solar Probe really "touch the sun"?

Next month, NASA will give the sun its big picture. The Parker Solar Probe will begin a seven-year mission to examine the sun's energy, with the goal of better protecting people and spaceships from the potentially devastating effects of the star. A particularly important milestone for the probe? "Touch the sun," says NASA.

Whereas the sun is a hot gas ball – without a solid surface – what does it mean exactly?

After the launch, not earlier than August 4, Parker will periodically pbad through the outermost layer of the sun's atmosphere, called the crown, where temperatures can rise up to 3, 5 million degrees Fahrenheit (2 million degrees Celsius).

Even more bizarre, the sun's crown is 300 times hotter than photosphere – the lowest layer of the sun's atmosphere, where solar flares and sunspots form. (Why is this the case is always a mystery – it's a question that Parker is designed to answer.) And as the crown emerges in space as a flow of charged particles known as solar wind, the superheated gas cools. [See Gorgeous Images of the Sun’s Corona in Simulations]

Because of extreme temperatures, space ships observing the sun have trouble getting close enough to have a complete picture of the activity of the crown. Thus, the Parker solar probe, equipped with a special shield, will zoom in to 4 million miles (6.4 million kilometers) of the photosphere of the sun to get close-ups. It's more than 14 times closer than Mercury to the sun – an average distance of 93 million kilometers. And it will be the closest that any man made object has been to the sun – essentially, Parker will "touch the sun."

"Parker is going to be the first time we get close enough to," said Eric Christian, a researcher at NASA's NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, on Live Science. [19659005] Parker's main scientific goals are to understand how the solar wind is accelerated and why the crown is superheated.These are important scientific and exploration issues, said Christian.The sun periodically emits solar flares and, with they, coronal mbad ejections that can carry dangerous charged particles through the solar system.

Parker's Heat Shield is a lightweight 4.5-inch thick carbon foam core according to NASA. It is surrounded by two panels of carbon-carbon composite overheated.The nearest side of the sun has been spray-coated to reflect the energy. e star, allowing the spacecraft to stay as cool as possible.

The spacecraft will be so close to the sun that it will not be able to take pictures looking straight at it, otherwise it will be damaged. So, NASA will depend on its fleet of other solar vessels to show what the sun looks like while Parker collects information about the star's activity. The Solar Dynamics Observatory and the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory already perform regular remote star observations to monitor its sunspots, eruptions and other indications of activity. solar, so they will continue to do this work while Parker gets his close up view. 19659005] Parker's first glimpse of the sun will come just four months after launch. First, he will do a quick overview of Venus. However, Christian said that scientific observations on the planet are unlikely, because Parker's instruments are designed to capture charged particles, and Venus does not have much magnetic field. Next, Parker will dive nearly 27 million miles (27 million km) from the sun in this particular flyby, independently gathering observations and then slowly transmitting them to Earth the following year, Christian said.

Why the delay? The sun is a powerful source of radio waves, and it can interfere with Parker's communications. While Parker is close to the sun and orbiting near the sun (compared to the view of the Earth), NASA will avoid contacting the probe, so that the space agency controls do not confuse the spaceship. NASA is already used to such situations, as when Mars is getting closer to the sun (from the Earth's point of view) and the agency suspends its conversations with rovers on the surface.

Christian is eager to see what Parker will show us about the sun. In relation to the Earth's weather forecast, he said, our predictions of solar time "are far behind … We can not predict when the sun will clear these storms," ​​he said. But with more data, scientists may one day understand solar weather and the formation of tornadoes on Earth today, he said

Originally published on Live Science