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The US NASA space agency is about to launch a car-sized spacecraft in August toward Sun, in an attempt to study the star closer than Anything made by the man. The probe will face the heat and radiation that no spacecraft has ever endured, revealing mysteries behind the lifeline of our solar system.
Alex Young, Deputy Director of Science, Heliophysics Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
"We have studied the sun for decades, and now we will finally go where the action is."
Parker Solar Probe: the spacecraft the size of a car to study the sun
The Parker Solar Probe, a robotic spacecraft – the size of a small car – should be launched of Cape Canaveral Florida on a united Delta IV Heavy launch alliance, with August 6 as launch date for the seven-year mission scheduled
The Delta IV Heavy is one of the most powerful rockets in the world
It should fly in the Sun's crown within 6.1 million kilometers of the solar surface, seven times more than any other spacecraft.
Technicians and engineers execute the light bar tests on NASA's Parker Solar Probe, which will travel in the Sun's atmosphere, to the Astrotech processing plant near NASA's Kennedy Space Center, in Titusville, Florida, United States, June 5, 2018. (Image: Reuters)
The project scientist from Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Lab, said at a conference of Press Friday:
"Send a probe where you have not been before is ambitious.The send in such brutal conditions is very ambitious."
The probe, named from after the American astrophysicist Eugene Newman Parker, will have to survive difficult heat and radiation conditions, with a range of instruments to study the sun.
Parker Solar Probe was equipped with a heat shield designed to maintain its instruments at an acceptable temperature of 29 degrees Celsius, even when the spacecraft is facing temperatures approaching 1,370 degrees Celsius as it passes the nearest
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About the project
The project, with a cost of $ 1.5 billion, is NASA's first major mission. Living With a Star Program The objective of the space agency is to collect data on the inner workings of the highly magnetized crown
Parker Solar Probe will explore the crown, a region of the Sun only seen from the Earth. When the Moon blocks the bright face of the Sun during total solar eclipses, the probe should use seven Venus flyovers for nearly seven years to gradually reduce its orbit around the Sun. It will use instruments designed to image the solar wind and study electric and magnetic fields, coronal plasma and energetic particles.
A series of images from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) of NASA shows the first moments of a significant solar energy. flare in different wavelengths of light February 24, 2014. The hot solar material can be seen hovering above the active region in the atmosphere of the sun, the crown. (Image: REUTERS)
According to NASA, the biggest breakthrough for the spacecraft is its advanced thermal shield.
Also read: 12 new moons discovered around Jupiter and one of them is a false road The thermal protection system (the heat shield) is one of the enabling technologies for the space mission, "said Andy Driesman, project manager of Parker Solar Probe at Johns Hopkins. Applied Physics Lab, adding:
"It allows the spacecraft to operate at about room temperature."
The heat shield is a carbon-carbon composite sandwich surrounding nearly four and a half inches of carbon foam, which
Guo Yanping of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, who designed the trajectory of the mission, said:
"The launch energy to reach the Sun is 55 times greater than that needed to reach Mars, and twice needed to get to Pluto."
He also added that during the Summer, the Earth and the other planets of our solar system are in the most favorable alignment to bring us closer to the Sun.
The solar winds and their effects on space time: Parker's mission
The krone gives birth to the solar wind, a continuous stream of charged particles that permeates the solar system.
The atmosphere of the Sun constantly sends magnetized material outward, enveloping our solar system far beyond the orbit of Pluto. Magnetic energy coils can burst with light and radiation from particles that pass through space and create temporary disturbances in the atmosphere, sometimes blurring radio and communication signals near the Earth. .
The glowing canyon traces the channel where the magnetic fields explode. In reality, the sun is not made of fire, but of something called plasma: particles so hot that their electrons have evaporated, creating a charged gas that is intertwined with magnetic fields. (Image: REUTERS / NASA)
In other words, unpredictable solar winds cause disturbances in the magnetic field of our planet and can wreak havoc on Earth's communications technology. NASA hopes that the discoveries will enable scientists to predict changes in the Earth's space environment.
"Even though the solar wind is invisible, we can see it encircle the poles like the aurora, which are beautiful – but reveal the tremendous amount of energy and particles that spill into our atmosphere, "said Nicky Fox:
" We do not quite understand the mechanisms that direct this wind towards us, and that's what we "
Therefore, the key to understanding its origins lies in the understanding of the Sun itself and it is there that Parker Solar Probe comes in.
The coronal mass ejection did not travel directly to Earth, but to connect with the Earth's magnetic environment, or magnetosphere, causing the onset of aurora in the night of September 3, 2012. The above image includes an image of the Earth to show the size of the CME in relation to the size of the Earth. (Photo: REUTERS / NASA)
In addition, the instruments of Par ker Solar Probe could reveal the mechanisms behind the acceleration of solar energy particles, which can reach speeds twice as fast as the speed of light. Sun. Such particles can interfere with satellite electronics, especially for satellites outside the Earth's magnetic field.
"It is fundamental for us to be able to predict this space time just as we predict time here on Earth," adds Alex Young. :
"In the most extreme cases of these space weather events, it can actually affect our power grids here on Earth."
Pass nearest the sun
The previous closest pass to the Sun was a probe called Helios 2, which in 1976 came within 27 million miles (43 million km). For comparison, the average distance of the Sun for the Earth is 150 million kilometers.
Read also: A young star devours a planet and this time, NASA saw it [19659002] Interested in General knowledge and current events? Click here to stay informed and find out what's going on around the world with our G.K. and the current affairs section.
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