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Parker's NASA solar probe will dive into the solar corona later in the day, marking the story as it continues its fiery descent to our star.
The probe, which is about the size of a family hatchback, has already approached the sun more than any other man-made object and is now only 24 million kilometers from its surface.
He will enter his second of his 24 solar encounters at about 23:40 CST today (18:40 EDT) and will face extreme cosmic radiation – 500 times more intense than Earth – and temperatures of 1,300 ° C (2,400 ° F). ).
According to current estimates, the vehicle will travel at 343,000 km / h (213,200 mph), fast enough to fly 39 times per hour between New York and London.
The probe entered the sun's orbit in November and has been moving ever since. His last visit in 2024 will be only 3.1 million km (6.1 million km) of its surface, when it will burn.
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NASA's Parker Solar Probe has begun its second orbit of the sun. The craft took off in August as part of a historic mission to get closer to our star compared to any other spacecraft. The image of an artist is photographed
The Parker probe, which is about the size of a family hatchback, has already approached the sun more than any other man-made object and is only 24 million kilometers from its surface. He will enter his second of 24 solar encounters around 11:40 pm TSD (6:40 pm EDT) today.
NASA designed the probe to protect its fragile internal instruments from harsh conditions and to capture most of the sun's heat.
The US space agency hopes to maintain an internal temperature of 29 ° C and take essential measures of the crown to dispel the mystique surrounding our nearest star.
For example, scientists expect to receive vital data to help explain a long-standing mystery among physicists: why the crown is 300 times hotter than the sun's surface.
Our star still raises many unanswered questions, especially regarding its ability to produce such violent material plumes, called solar flares or coronal mass ejections.
These ions – charged particles – travel at extraordinary speeds, up to half the speed of light, before submerging all objects in the solar system and spraying them with potentially fatal radiation.
The Earth is protected by them by the thick atmosphere of our planet and by its powerful magnetic field and, for the most part, it is only manifested by auroras at the north and south poles.
More powerful events are likely to affect electronics on Earth, affecting GPS and other satellite-dependent services.
"Parker Solar Probe provides us with the essential measurements to understand the solar phenomena that have intrigued us for decades," said Nour Raouafi, chief scientist of the Parker Solar Probe project at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, in which Maryland.
"To close the link, local sampling of the solar corona and the young solar wind is needed, and Parker Solar Probe is doing just that."
HOW WILL THE PARKER SOLAR PROBE BE SO CLOSE TO THE SUN?
According to NASA, the Parker Solar Probe mission will require 55 times more energy than it would take to reach Mars.
He launched at the top of a Delta United Heavy Alliance launched, one of the most powerful rockets in the world, with a third leg.
But its trajectory and speed are essential to reach good orbit.
While the Earth, and all that it covers, travels at about 100,000 kilometers an hour in a direction away from the sun, the craft must be launched back to cancel lateral movement, NASA says.
The Parker probe approaching the sun, it will have to remove about 53 000 km / hour, according to the space agency.
The Parker solar probe will land seven times around Venus. Each passage slows it down and brings it closer to the sun. These orbits are shown in the animation above
This will require a boost from the powerful Delta IV rocket and several Venus gravitational aids to slow it down.
The probe will rely on a series of Venus gravitational aids to slow its lateral movement, which will allow it to move away from the sun's surface to only 3.8 million kilometers.
"In this case, rather than accelerating the spacecraft, as in a conventional gravitational assistance, Venus slows its lateral motion so that the spacecraft can get close to the sun," NASA says.
"When it finally gets closer, the Parker solar sensor will have lost much of its lateral speed, but will have gained a lot of overall speed thanks to the gravity of the sun.
"The Parker solar sensor will pass the sun at a speed of 430,000 km / h."
At its closest approach, it will rise only 3.8 million kilometers from the sun's surface, making it the only spacecraft to venture so close to the earth.
This cosmic encounter between humanity and the stars will last until April 10 and NASA will lose contact with the spacecraft during this period.
It will complete its orbit and focus its resources on maintaining its heat shield in the direction of the ruthless onslaught of heat and charged sun particles.
A mission in the depths of the sun required materials capable of withstanding unparalleled conditions.
To respond to astrophysical challenges, NASA had to create new materials with remarkable thermal properties.
A 4.5 inch (11.5 cm) thick carbon composite shell was developed. It is attached to the probe and provides it with the essential of its protection.
NASA expects to start receiving a tiny amount of data from the pass over an extended period of several weeks later in the spring.
"The probe is designed to cope with intense temperatures and radiation. Although 24 million kilometers seem far away from the sun, it is only a little over 17 sun-widths, "said Dr. Emily Brunsden, director of York University's astrocampus at the physics department, said MailOnline.
"We owe life on Earth to our nearest star, the Sun, and it's easy to forget how impressive and dynamic it is. There are solar storms, huge energy explosions and twists and changes in magnetic fields.
"We see the effects of energy phenomena directly on the Earth in the form of charged particles that interact with our atmosphere to create auroras. We can therefore consider ourselves living in the atmosphere of the Sun, called the solar wind.
Understanding the structure and dynamics of magnetic fields, energy flows and accelerated particles at the solar wind sources helps us understand our local environment in the space.
"That's what the Parker Solar Probe will provide us with valuable data."
The Parker Solar Probe will complete a total of 24 planned orbits over the next seven years, bringing it closer to the surface. The position of the probe, its speed and its round-trip light from 28 January 2019 are shown in the graph above.
Parker became the closest object created by humans to orbit the sun in October, when it surpassed the previous best effort of the Helios 2 probe.
It reached 42.7 km (26.55 million miles) from the star in 1976 and the record lasted over 60 years until Parker easily crossed this mark and now stands at 24. million km (24 km) from the sun.
The day closest to the sun will be Christmas Eve 2024, when it is expected to reach a distance of only 6.3 million km from the surface, more than seven times more than Helios 2 has reached and only four percent of the distance between the sun and the earth.
Parker's final approach in five years will be a kamikaze mission and will lead to the destruction of the probe.
At this point in his life cycle, he will have too little fuel to control his orientation with enough precision to tilt his shield towards the heat and may not be able to protect himself or be cremated.
The $ 1.5 billion Parker Probe probe took off at the top of one of the world's most powerful rockets and will eventually reach a record speed of 430,000 km / h at the end. of its orbits.
To reach this nearness with the sun, NASA had to be creative with Parker's projected obit and engineers found a way to manipulate Venus' orbit to launch them closer and closer to the Sun.
The craft was named in honor of Dr. Eugene Parker, who had predicted the existence of the solar wind in 1958 and is the only living person ever to have had a NASA mission in his name.
WHAT IS THE SOLAR PROBE PARKER OF NASA?
The Parker solar probe (PSP) is expected to travel seven times closer to the sun than any other spacecraft
NASA's Parker Solar Probe (PSP) is about to move seven times closer to the sun than any other spacecraft that precedes it.
It was launched on August 12, 2018 in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.
The probe will fly to the outside atmosphere of the sun to study the lives of stars and their weather events.
It is hoped that the PSP will help scientists better understand solar flares – brief eruptions of intense, high-energy radiation on the sun's surface that could block communications on the Earth.
The probe will dive within 4 million miles (6.5 million km) of the sun's surface, bringing it seven times closer to the sun's surface than any other spacecraft that precedes it.
The craft will be subjected to extreme heat and radiation and will reach speeds of up to 700,000 km / h (700,000 km / h) at its closest flyover to the star.
The kit includes a white light imager called Whisper, which will take pictures of solar waves while the craft propels them at high speed.
To measure the "bulk plasma" of the solar winds – described by NASA as the "daily bread" of the flares, a set of magnetic imaging equipment will also be stored on board.
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