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The sun looks like a yellow disc of constant brightness, but the reality is more complex: it emits high levels of radiation, it has a large number of points and violently ejects particles that can reach the Earth. The European Space Agency (ESA, by its acronym) will seek to unveil its mysteries: in 2020, it will launch the mission Solar Orbiter, designed to better understand how the sun works and how solar storms affect the Earth and the entire solar system.
Daniel Sánchez, responsible for the development of earth science infrastructure mission, told Europa Press in an interview that this would be one of the main milestones of the mission: although it will only be not the first to come closer to the mission. astro (this landmark is entered by Parker Solar Probe, NASA), yes it will be the first to make observations on the solar poles, since she will ship telescopes. "We hope to have never seen images of the sun's poles"Sánchez says.
The ESA Solar Orbiter probe in preliminary tests in Germany. (ESA)
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Solar Orbiter will be equipped with antennas, detectors, sensors and nine telescopes. And you will a heat shield Made of titanium, carbon fiber, thermal blankets and even an animal bone coating to withstand very high temperatures.
The scientist was shown cautious when he was asked to compare the images produced by the Sun with the first real image of a black hole – an event that was a big step for Science thus confirming "one of the pillars of astrophysics and Theoretical Physics" -. But he said that the audiovisual material on the star will help to better understand how stars work.
"Although we have very clear scientific objectives for the mission, the final impact of this type of project is always difficult to predict because of its very nature. scientific exploration of the unknown", Solar Orbiter explains ESA wishes the mission to capture details of a width of 180 km (the visible disk width of the Sun is 1.4 million km).
Due to its technical difficulty, the mission is three years late. Now, have confirmed the scientists, it has a launch date: it will be in February 2020 The European ship will tackle a problem mainly: how the sun creates and controls the heliosphere, an area of interstellar space around the Sun where its influence is greater than that of other neighboring stars.
"The sun is forming a kind of bubble in the interstellar medium, in which are all the planets, full of radiation and the particles expelled by the Sun that constitute the solar wind – explains the scientist of ESA-. Every few hours or every day violent phenomena related to the magnetic field of the sun near its surface causing explosions that result in larger amounts of particles and electromagnetic radiation in the interplanetary medium. These are usually called solar storms"
Of all these phenomena, the more violent ones cause a change in the intensity of the solar wind and a different interaction with the Earth's magnetic field. "This is the field of study of space weather that describes the effects of the most energetic phenomena of the Sun on the Earth and on the infrastructures we deploy in space (such as communication or navigation satellites)" , did he declare.
Illustration of the Solar Orbiter mission. (NASA)
Solar Orbiter will try to understand why the solar wind accelerates up to 800 kilometers per second or why its crown is heated up to 1 to 2 million degreessaid Yannis Zouganelis, deputy chief scientist of the project
"In addition, a problem that has remained unresolved since the birth of Solar Physics some 170 years ago: why the sun's activity has a cycle of 11 yearsSanchez added.
More than 500 degrees of temperature
In order to be able to observe the solar poles, the probe will bring its telescopes to a quarter of the distance from the Earth of the Sun. "The nearest approximation of the Sun will be around 42 million kilometers, closer than Mercury, the planet closest to the star, "says Sanchez.
This proximity to the star will mean withstand temperatures of over 500ºC, for which the ship is equipped with a heat shield specially designed to operate under these conditions. "This has resulted in the development of solar panels and communication antennas that must also withstand very high temperatures, a first-level technological challenge"says the expert, who also admits that the fact that the shield has special openings to allow the telescopes to take pictures adds to the complexity of the challenge.
According to Sanchez, the "key" to do everything "on wheels" is to maintain the instrumentation at a very low temperature, compatible with the on-board electronics and detectors, "some of which even need temperatures below zero". "To do this, the ship must always aim for the sun and the instruments must be connected to radiators installed outside the ship, always in the shadows, in order to evacuate the heat in the space", explains -he.
The ESA Solar Orbiter probe in preliminary tests in Germany. (ESA)
At high temperatures add the variation along the trajectory that will follow the ship. In order to be able to observe the poles of the Sun, Solar Orbiter must follow an inclined trajectory relative to the plane in which the planets evolve, and to achieve it, the ship has pbaded several times very close to Venus in order to take advantage of its gravity to reach the planet. "This implies a very elliptical orbit that brings it closer to the Sun, but also removes it more than Venus, with the resulting temperature variations," he explains.
On the other hand, the ship sometimes moves away nearly 300 million kilometers from the Earth, which implies that "communications at this distance are much slower only when it is close. "There is a 25 factor between the best and the worst data download speeds that allows us to plan observations with great care," he says.
"We know a lot about the Sun, how energy is generated in the nucleus through nuclear fusion reactions, how this energy is propagated, and we know a lot of details about it. evolution and its aging, in particular on the energy phenomena in the most superficial layers that are the result of unknown phenomena yet", concludes the researcher.
The mission will be controlled from the European Space Operations Center (ESOC) in Darmstadt (Germany), with the help of the ESA's Malargüe earth station in Buenos Aires ( Argentina). As for scientific operations, they will be managed by the European Space Astronomy Center (ESAC) in Madrid (Spain).
Source: DPA and EFE
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