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NASA is preparing to send a probe closer to the Sun than any other spacecraft.
The craft will have to withstand the nasty heat by zooming through the solar corona to study this outermost part of the stellar atmosphere that gives rise to the Parker Solar Probe, a robotic spacecraft the size of A small car, should be launched from Cape Canaveral Florida, August 6 being the launch date of the planned seven-year mission. 19659002] It is planned to fly in the Sun's crown to 6.1 million km from the solar surface, seven times closer than any other spacecraft.
"Sending a probe where you've never been is ambitious – sending it in such brutal conditions is very ambitious," said Nicola Fox, a researcher at the Institute's Applied Physics Laboratory. Johns Hopkins University, at a press conference.
The previous closest pass was a probe called Helios 2, which in 1976 was less than 43 million km. For comparison, the average distance of the Sun to the Earth is 150 million km
The corona 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.
The spacecraft should use seven Venus overflights 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.
NASA aims to collect data on the inner workings of the highly magnetized crown
The probe, named after the American astrophysicist Eugene Newman Parker, will have to survive difficult heat and radiation conditions .
It was equipped with a heat shield designed to keep its instruments at a tolerable temperature of 29 degrees Celsius, even when the spacecraf t faces temperatures reaching nearly 1,370 degrees Celsius at its most close.
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