NASA will launch the Parker probe to study the sun [Ciencia] – 20/07/2018

Mexico .- The National Administration of Aeronautics and Space (NASA) confirmed today that it is about to launch August 6, one of his most ambitious missions, Parker solar probe, whose purpose will be to study the Sun's surface, so it will be the closest to the star.

The mission plan is to place the Parker probe at a distance of about 6.1 million kilometers from the surface of the Sun, in its outer atmosphere or crown, where temperatures reach millions of degrees Kelvin .

"We have been studying the Sun for decades, and now we will finally go where the action is," said Alex Young, director of science at the Heliophysical Science Division at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

NASA's young scientists presented Friday at a televised press conference the objectives of the Parker solar probe mission, which will be launched from the NASA Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, in New York. Florida.

The Parker Solar Probe will gradually approach the Sun, approaching each Venus flyover before reaching a perihelion – its closest point to the Sun – at a distance of about 3, 8 million miles (about 6.1 million miles). from here the end of 2024. This distance will place the probe within the orbit of Mercury, which will be closer to the Sun than the Helios 2 mission in the United States reached in 1976. [19659002] The Mission It is named after Eugene Parker, the scientist who predicted in 1958 the influence of the solar wind, a flow of plasma that travels outward through the solar system. The probe, the size of a sedan, has used the technology developed by NASA over the last six decades to make possible the scientific objectives of the mission.

NASA said in a statement that the key to triggering the spacecraft is three key breakthroughs: the advanced thermal shield, the solar panel cooling system, and the advanced failure management system. Other key innovations are the solar panel cooling system and on-board fault management systems.

The mission aims to study several aspects considered scientific mysteries, such as the solar wind acceleration, the constant output of the sun's material. "Although we largely capture the origins of the solar wind in the Sun, we know that there is a point, not yet observed, where the solar wind is accelerating to supersonic speeds," NASA said.

The data show that these changes occur in the corona, a region of the Sun's atmosphere where the probe will fly directly, and scientists plan to use the measurements that the probe will do for the light on how this phenomenon occurs. Scientists also hope to learn the secret of the enormous temperatures of the solar corona.

The temperature of the visible surface of the Sun is about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, but for reasons that are not yet completely understood, the crown is hundreds of times warmer, reaching several million degrees Fahrenheit.

Scientists also hope that the probe's instruments reveal the mechanisms that underlie the acceleration of solar energy particles, which can reach speeds greater than half the speed of light when They move away from the Sun.

Such particles can interfere with satellite electronics, especially for satellites outside the Earth's magnetic field.