NASA’s Parker Solar Space Probe is making history. It’s gotten closer to the sun’s atmosphere than any other humanmade object.
The mission launched back in 2018, and it has been making its way closer and closer to the sun using the planet Venus by losing some of its orbital energy, according to Georgia de Nolfo, NASA acting deputy director of heliophysics.
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On Tuesday, even at 3.8 million miles from the sun, researchers and scientists from NASA say this accomplishment will lead to a better understanding of the sun and could even tell us how other stars in our galaxy are working and how that could relate to habitability on other planets.
De Nolfo says the probe is making its approach during a period of solar maximum, which is the phase of highest activity for our sun.
You’ll recall the solar eclipse in April and the solar storms that resulted in Aurora Borealis that could be seen from as far south as Southern California. NASA researchers say this mission can provide more insight into those solar events, too.
“I think it’s exciting because we have an opportunity to use our sun and our solar system as a local observatory or laboratory if you will, so we’ll be able to actually go right where all those processes are getting started and really figure out what’s going on so that we can better understand our local star,” de Nolfo said. “But that also helps us to inform us about how other stars in our galaxy are working and how that maybe even connects to habitability and other planets.”
You might be wondering how the probe withstands the heat from the sun.
“We have a heat shield that’s kind of a carbon composite that actually takes the temperature on the one side closer to the sun. It’s 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit. On the other side, it’s 85 degrees Fahrenheit,” de Nolfo said. “It’s kind of an amazing feat to have that heat shield there, and there’s even more engineering because all of those instruments in the spacecraft have to be behind the heat shield to get that protection. So as the spacecraft is orbiting the sun, it has to pivot to make sure that all of that stuff is in the shade, and both those things have really enabled this mission to happen.”
De Nolfo explained that the probe will continue to orbit the sun, and while it’s doing that, there is a whole fleet of other spacecraft looking at the sun in different ways. The next one to be launched in April is the Punch Mission, which de Nolfo says will look at the sun in 3D.
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