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Early in the morning of August, the sky near Cape Canaveral, Florida, illuminates with the launch of Parker Solar Probe. Earlier on August 6, 2018, a united Delta IV Heavy launch alliance will launch in space a spaceship the size of a car, which will study the Sun closer than any object created by l & # 39; man.
On July 20, 2018, Parker Solar Probe researcher Nicky Fox at Applied Physics Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University, Laurel, Maryland, and Alex Young, Deputy Scientific Director, Heliophysics Division, Goddard Space Flight. NASA Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The scientific goals and technology behind them at a televised press conference at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida
"We have been studying the Sun for decades, and now we will finally go where the action is, "said Young.
Our sun is much more complex than we see.Rather than the stable and immutable disc, it seems to human eyes, the Sun is a star dynamic and magnetically active.The atmosphere of the Sun constantly sends the magnetized material to the outside, enveloping our solar system far beyond the orbit of Pluto and influencing all worlds
The Coils Magnetic energy can explode with light and particles that cross the space and create temporary disturbances in our atmosphere, sometimes radio garbling and communication signals near the Earth. The influence of solar activity on the Earth and on other worlds is collectively known as spatial meteorology, and the key to understanding its origins lies in the understanding of the Sun itself
. "And even if the solar wind is invisible, we can see it encircle the poles like the auroras, which are beautiful, but reveal the enormous amount of energy and particles that flow into our atmosphere. who are directing this wind towards us, and that's what we are going to discover. "
This is where Parker Solar Probe comes in. The spaceship carries a range of instruments to study the sun at a distance and in situ, or directly. Together, the data from these state-of-the-art instruments should help scientists answer three fundamental questions about our star.
One of these issues is the mystery of the solar wind acceleration, the constant flow of matter from the Sun. Although we largely understand the origins of the solar wind on the Sun, we know that there is a point – still unobserved – where the solar wind is accelerated to supersonic speeds. The data show that these changes occur in the crown, a region of the sun's atmosphere that Parker Solar Probe will cross directly, and scientists plan to use Parker Solar Probe's remote and in situ measurements. to understand how this happens. Scientists hope to learn the secret of the extremely high temperatures of the crown. The visible surface of the Sun is about 10,000 F – but, for reasons we do not fully understand, the crown is hundreds of times warmer, exceeding several million degrees F. THISOIS counter-intuitive because The energy of the Sun is produced
"It's a bit like you're moving away from a campfire and suddenly getting hotter," Fox says.
Finally, Parker Solar Probe instruments should reveal the mechanisms behind the acceleration of solar energy particles. can reach speeds more than half the speed of light as they fuse away from the Sun. Such particles can interfere with satellite electronics, especially for satellites outside the Earth's magnetic field.
To answer these questions, Parker Solar Probe uses four suites of instruments
The FIELDS suite, led by the University of California at Berkeley. measures the electric and magnetic fields around the spacecraft. FIELDS captures waves and turbulence in the inner heliosphere with high temporal resolution to understand the fields associated with waves, shocks and magnetic reconnection, a process by which magnetic field lines are explosively realigning [19659002] Parker Solar Probe, is the only imaging instrument aboard the spacecraft. WISPR takes images from structures such as coronal mass ejections or CMEs, jets and other ejectas from the Sun to help link what is happening in the large-scale coronal structure to detailed physical measurements captured directly in the body. Environment close to the Sun. WISPR is led by the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C.
Another suite, called SWEAP (abbreviation for Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons Investigation), uses two complementary instruments to collect data. The SWEAP suite of instruments counts the most abundant particles in the solar wind – electrons, protons, and helium ions – and measures properties such as velocity, density, and temperature to improve our understanding of the solar wind and plasma coronal. SWEAP is led by the University of Michigan, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Finally, the ISOIS suite – abbreviation for Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun, and including ?, The symbol for the sun, in its acronym – measures particles across a wide range of energies. By measuring electrons, protons and ions, ISOIS will understand the life cycles of particles – where they come from, how they have become accelerated and how they move from the Sun through interplanetary space. ISOIS is led by Princeton University in New Jersey.
Parker Solar Probe is a mission of some sixty years in the making. With the dawn of the space age, humanity has been introduced to the full dimension of the powerful influence of the sun on the solar system. In 1958, physicist Eugene Parker published a revolutionary scientific article theorizing the existence of the solar wind. The mission now bears his name, and it is NASA's first mission to bear the name of a living person.
Technology has only come a long way in the last few decades to make Parker Solar Probe a reality. The key to the adventurous journey of the spacecraft are three major advances: the advanced thermal shield, the solar panel cooling system and the advanced defect management system.
"The thermal protection system (heat shield) is one of the spaceship's missions," said Andy Driesman, Parker Solar Probe project manager at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. "This allows the spacecraft to operate at about room temperature."
Other critical innovations are the solar panel cooling system and embedded fault management systems. The solar panel cooling system allows the solar panels to generate energy under the intense heat load of the Sun and the fault management system protects the spacecraft for long periods of time when the spacecraft can not communicate with the Earth.
Parker Solar Probe's fault management system protects seven solar vessels around the edges of the shadow projected by the heat shield. It protects the spacecraft for long periods when it can not communicate with the Earth. If it detects a problem, Parker Solar Probe corrects its trajectory itself and indicates that its scientific instruments remain cold and work during long periods when the spacecraft is out of contact with the Earth.
Parker Solar Probe Thermal Shield – called the Thermal Protection System, or TPS – is a carbon-carbon composite sandwich surrounding nearly four and a half inches of carbon foam, which is about 97% of the time. 39; air. Despite its eight-foot diameter, the TPS adds only 160 pounds to the weight of Parker Solar Probe thanks to its lightweight materials.
Although the Delta IV Heavy is one of the most powerful rockets in the world, Parker Solar Probe is relatively small about the size of a small car. But what Parker Solar Probe needs is energy: getting to the Sun requires a lot of energy at launch to reach its orbit around the Sun. That's because any object launched from Earth starts traveling around the Sun at the same speed as the Earth – about 18.5 miles per second – so an object must travel incredibly fast to counteract that momentum, change direction and approach the Sun. [19659002] The launch of the Parker Solar Probe – between 4 am and 6 pm EDT, and within approximately two weeks – was chosen with precision to send Parker Solar Probe to its first vital target to reach a such orbit: Venus. 19659002] "The launch energy to reach the Sun is 55 times greater than that required to get to Mars, and twice that of Pluto," said Yanping Guo of the Applied Physics Lab Johns Hopkins, who designed the trajectory of the mission. "During the summer, the Earth and the other planets in our solar system are in the most favorable alignment to bring us closer to the Sun."
The spacecraft will perform gravitational assistance to lose some of its velocity in Venus' well of orbital energy, attracting Parker Solar Probe into an orbit that – already, on its first pass – carries it over Near the solar surface no matter what spacecraft has ever been, well inside the crown. Parker Solar Probe will perform similar maneuvers six more times during its seven-year mission, helping the spacecraft to final sequence of orbits that pass more than 3.8 million miles from the photosphere.
"By studying our star, we can learn more about the Sun," said Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator of the Science Missions Directorate at NASA headquarters. "We can also learn more about all the other stars across the galaxy, the universe and even the beginnings of life."
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High Fidelity Images of the Show Structured Sun Atmosphere, Corona Dynamics
San Antonio TX (SPX) July 19, 2018
A team led by the Southwest Research Institute discovered fine-grained structures never previously detected in the The outer atmosphere of the Sun, or crown. The team imagined this critical region in detail using sophisticated software techniques and longer exposures of the COR-2 camera aboard the NASA Solar and Earth Observatory Observatory (STEREO-A) .
The outer ring of the Sun is the source of the solar wind, the flow of charged particles that flow from the Sun in all directions. Measured near Earth, … read more
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