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Around 11 am On Monday, NASA's "touching the sun" mission officially broke the record for the fastest spacecraft in motion, becoming the fastest object ever created by man, compared to Sun. Recording a single historic moment, however, was not enough for the brave explorer, because the same day the Parker solar probe was also closer to the sun than any previous probe.
"It's been just 78 days since the Solar Parker solar sensor was launched, and we are now closer to our star than any other spacecraft in history," said project director Andy Driesman, in a statement. A press release.
According to the team's calculations, the new speed to beat is 153,454 miles per hour as seen from the sun at the back. It's 90 times faster than your typical ball and more than twice as fast as the Earth orbiting our host star, the fastest we can ever travel. This clip also represents just over two-tenths of the speed of light, or 230 "ultra-light," as shown by astrophysicist Jonathon McDowell. Twitter. Since Monday, this fierce speed has removed 26.55 million miles from the sun's surface, about three times closer to the star than Earth's orbit.
It is no coincidence that Parker broke both records, both established by the Helios 2 spacecraft, built in Germany and by the Americans, in April 1976, the same day. The vast majority of this motion did not come from the rocket or launch engines of the spacecraft, but from the fact that it collapsed toward the center of the solar system.
If we think that things are moving under the effect of gravity "down," the sun sits at the bottom of a funnel to open up – as the planets encircle as one of those pieces spiraling the airport. Earth "rolls" around this gravity sink at 67,000 miles at the hour (or 30 kilometers per second in the astrophysically preferred units). Anything that is faster will come out of the well, as did probes such as Voyager and New Horizons to reach the outdoor solar system. Something slower will begin to spiral toward the sun like a quarter turn around the drain.
McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Center compares the Earth's place in this gravity well to the shallows of the beach. "We have to travel a long way out of the solar system, but we must not get up very much," he says. "Gravity is just spinning around our ankles." New Horizons, which holds the launch speed record from Earth, took off 16 kilometers per second from our planet, but in the same direction as our orbital motion , reinforcing it from an Earth. the speed and pushing it towards Pluto.
Parker has adopted the opposite approach. Falling in the sun would be easy if the craft were still, but it began to sail at the impressive speed of the Earth – so, first, NASA's rocket specialists had to slow it down. They had pulled it back into Earth's orbit, halving its speed against the sun and leaving the field open to start falling inwards. "That's why distance to the sun and speed records are related," says McDowell. "The closer you come, the more gravity you have and the faster you fall."
And it fell. Now pushing 70 kilometers per second, the craft will continue to set new records continuously until its closest approach to the sun on November 6, when it will reach 95 kilometers per second (212 km / h). 500 miles to the hour) passing five times closer to the star. that the Earth never does. From there, he will go around the sun and start climbing out of gravity, completing the first half of many orbits that bring him closer and closer to the surface of the star.
These loops will eventually plunge him directly into the misunderstood plasma that surrounds the sun. The crown paradoxically burns millions of degrees warmer than the surface of the star itself, despite millions of kilometers in space. NASA expects Parker to directly sample this unexplored area on its 22nd orbit, which will take place in about six years.
Until then, he will continue to break his closest speed and approach records, which, according to McDowell, constitutes an appropriate update of the largely neglected legacy of the Helios 1 and 2. "The Large space probes of the 1970s, the very ambitious, were three in number: Viking, Voyager and Helios. You've heard of Viking and Voyager, but you have never heard of Helios, "says McDowell. Measurements of the solar wind and the magnetic field do not capture the imagination of the public in the same way as his camera-carrying cousins, he suggests, but his speed record is still close to 42 years.
Helios 1 still holds the record for the fastest spacecraft moving relative to the Earth, at about 96 kilometers per second, but Parker also comes for this superlative. According to McDowell, he should beat that speed on November 5 and set a new record of 110 kilometers per second two days later.
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