How NASA's mission to touch the sun can reveal clues to extraterrestrial worlds

An artist representation of a planet type "hot Jupiter" orbiting around a star of the same size as our sun.

(NASA / JPL-Caltech)

NASA's new mission to the sun could also reveal clues to extraterrestrial worlds.

Every day we rely on the sun to warm us up and enlighten us, but we need the Earth's atmosphere to protect us from the harsh conditions of our star – and because our sun is finally only 40 years old. another star. Planetary scientists told Space.com.

This means that the study of our sun could teach us also about the planets in distant solar systems. And a NASA mission may soon start: this fall, the Parker solar probe, launched in August, will begin to study how our star works. Exoplanet scientists monitor the mission to see what data they could offer on exotic worlds. [Launch Photos! NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Blasts Off to the Sun]

"We can learn a great deal from our sun and especially from other stars that look like the sun," Evgenya Shkolnik, an astrophysicist and planet specialist at the University of Arizona told Space.com. In particular, she wants to have a better idea of ​​the particles and photons of high energy, or particles of light, produced by the stars. "It is essential to understand all these things for exoplanet hosts," she said.

We know the dangers of these particles and photons from our own experiments on Earth, where the atmosphere of the planet protects us from the worst side effects of life near the sun: we absorb enough ultraviolet rays to damage the DNA Our cells are enough to kill us with cancer, and it is only during the most extreme solar explosions, called coronal mass ejections, that its highly charged particles submerge the Earth's magnetic field and thus interfere with our technology.

If an exoplanet is less fortunate in its natural protections or in the temperament of its stars, these particles and high-energy photons could be the decisive factors in the livability of an exoplanet, said Ravi Kopparapu, a scientist planetary of NASA. Even if a planet develops an atmosphere, if it is bombarded by too much stellar particles, this dam can destroy the atmosphere. "They can strip the atmosphere and then make the planet uninhabitable," Kopparapu told Space.com.

But both types of high-energy energy flows are incredibly difficult to study from a distance – hence the appeal of the Parker Solar probe.

The trajectory of the spacecraft through the sun's external atmosphere will allow it to be within 6 million kilometers of what we view as the sun's surface – at about the same distance from many exoplanet stars, said Shkolnik. In fact, during her conferences on these planets, she publishes images of solar eclipses and representations of planets to transmit the incredible environment around these planets.

"I show the crown and I put fake exoplanets in there because it's amazing to think that these planets are flowing through the crown of their suns," Shkolnik said. Many of these planets are what scientists have dubbed "hot Jupiters" and which are uninhabitably gassy themselves – but this may not be the end of the story.

"It is questionable whether moons around these hot Jupiters could be habitable," Shkolnik said. (Scientists have not yet discovered such moons, but they are still perfecting their ability to spot planets, which are much larger.) "This is not a crazy thought, because we think the moons of Jupiter and Saturn look for life in our solar system, "said Shkolnik.

So, Shkolnik is looking for data that Earth's solar probe will send home early this year, hoping to use it to isolate information about habitability near other sun-like stars. "I will not know how difficult or difficult this analysis will be until I see the data," she said. [The 7 Earth-Sized Planets of TRAPPIST-1 in Pictures]

And high-energy radiation, like ultraviolet light, does not only destroy poorly protected life; it can also deceive scientists into thinking that somewhere is more alive than it really is. This is because ultraviolet radiation can break down water and create oxygen, one of the key molecules that scientists are looking for as a potential signature of life. According to Kopparapu, extrapolating data from the Parker Solar probe could prevent scientists from being fooled by these false biosignatures.

Perhaps the most valuable will be to understand that the spacecraft can explain to us how the dynamics of the sun is shaped by its magnetic field, which seems to guide much of what is happening in and around of a star.

"In a way, everything is related to the sun's magnetic field," said Shkolnik. "Even though we do not have the details, we know it a lot."

Original article on Space.com.