NASA is ready to send a probe into the burning atmosphere of Sun

NASA is preparing to send a probe closer to the Sun than any other spacecraft, enduring the nasty heat while zooming in on the Solar corona to study this outermost part of the stellar atmosphere The Solar 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 years.
It is projected to fly in the Sun's crown at 6.1mn from the solar surface, seven times closer than any other spacecraft.
"Sending a probe where you have not been before is ambitious.The send in such brutal conditions is very ambitious," said Nicola Fox, a project scientist from the University of Applied Physics's laboratory. Johns Hopkins University, at a press conference on Friday
. 2, which in 1976 arrived at less than 43mn km.
For comparison, the average distance of the Sun for the Earth is 150mn km.
The crown gives birth to the solar wind, a continuous stream of charged particles that permeates the solar system.
Unpredictable solar winds cause disturbances in the magnetic field of our planet and can disrupt communications technology on Earth. 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 the weather here on Earth" scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. "In the most extreme cases of these space 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. . The probe, named after the American astrophysicist Eugene Newman Parker, will have to survive difficult heat and radiation conditions.
She was equipped with a heat shield. designed to keep its instruments at an acceptable temperature of 29 degrees Celsius, even when the spacecraft is facing temperatures as high as 1,370 degrees Celsius at its closest passing.