Recently, a ship smaller than a bus has achieved a number of significant advances in space exploration. NASA Parker Probe It has established itself as the fastest object ever built. Looking into the future, scientists at the American organization expect it to continue to break records.
Revolutionize our understanding of the Sun. This is the ambitious goal of this mission, which began about five years ago and will continue its journey with new approaches. “The spacecraft is gradually moving closer to the solar surface than ever before, within the orbit of Mercury. Its mission is to collect measurements and images to expand our knowledge of the origin and evolution of the wind emanating from the star. It also makes a decisive contribution to predicting changes in the space environment,” explains the space agency.
As we’ll look at in this juicy-details look at NASA’s Parker probe, the instrument deepens the research that concerns us here on our planet. So much so that study the effects of solar wind It is important to mitigate its impact on ground infrastructure. In addition, the development of the ship pushes the boundaries of research regarding thermal resistance.
Quick and interesting facts about NASA’s Parker probe
- Diameter 2.4 meters. a ship is smaller than a bus. It is also smaller in size than the James Webb Space Telescope in orbit. In a vertical position, four average-sized people will be needed, stacked on top of each other, to equal the height of the probe.
- Its weight is just over 635 kilograms. “It is very light compared to other spacecraft,” the space agency says. In terms of size, the SpaceX Starship has a total height of 120 meters and weighs about 4,000 tons.
- NASA’s Parker probe was in 156.7 million kilometers from Earth. This distance is equivalent to approximately 250,000 trips from Madrid to Barcelona.
- Also at this moment – in the image we see the indication “live— The Parker solar probe is located 100 million kilometers from the Sun. On September 27, it made its closest approach to the Sun, when it passed “only” 7.26 million kilometers from the surface of the large star. Earlier in 2021, it became the first spacecraft to fly through the solar corona, the outermost layer of the Sun.
- In its recent approach, the seventeenth since its launch in 2018, NASA’s Parker probe reached speed 635,266 kilometers per hour. This is almost 1,700 times faster than the record achieved by a Formula 1 car. Moreover, this number on the speedometer is enough to drive from New York to Tokyo in about one minute.
Its launch and visits to Venus
Plan for reveal the secrets of the sun was launched on August 12, 2018, when the probe was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. To get away from Earth, he used one of the United Launch Alliance’s most powerful rockets, Delta IV Heavy. The search for power was not whimsical: this journey would require a lot of energy, 55 times more than a trip to Mars.
On its way to the Sun, NASA’s Parker probe visits surroundings of Venus, the second planet in the solar system in terms of proximity to the star, second only to Mercury in this aspect. According to the North American agency, the goal is not to appreciate the Venusian landscapes. “There, it uses gravitational assistance to bring its orbit closer to the Sun,” they point out. Now, unlike most maneuvers of this type, which use energy from the gravitational field of a planet or satellite to achieve acceleration, Parker slowed down and then moved towards his destination.
NASA’s Parker Probe and Research Benefits on site
The ship’s hot adventure aims to explore, from a privileged position, an area of the planetary system that holds the keys to understand the activity and great influence of the Sun. Based on this, there is an interesting detail: the probe was named after Dr. Eugene Newman Parker, an American astronomer and pioneer of solar wind research who died last year.
Long ago, in the 1950s, an astrophysicist developed a theory to explain the impressive temperature of the solar corona, whose material continually expands outward and in all directions to form the solar wind. A few years before his death, the scientist watched the launch of NASA’s Parker probe from the Kennedy Space Center. This was the first tribute to a living specialist. Other instruments, such as the James Webb Telescope, were christened posthumously.
“Although Dr. Parker predicted the existence of the solar wind 60 years ago, there are things we still don’t understand. (Many aspects) remain a big mystery,” experts admit. A fundamental step of the investigation, which began in 2018, is the possibility study solar phenomena from the scene. Or at least a little closer. “Our only measurements were taken from Earth. On this journey, the solar wind had to travel tens of millions of kilometers to disperse, cool, and mix. Instead, measurements from the Parker probe, located “only” a few million kilometers from the sun’s surface, reveal new details that should help shed light on the processes that send it into space, NASA explains.
Why is it important to study the Sun?
We are far from our star, about 150 million kilometers. However, hopefully we see this on a daily basis. It is known that its light and heat are necessary for life on Earth. His influence extends further. Therefore, the goal of NASA’s Parker probe is to achieve greater compression of the earth’s surface. big burning starwhose influence extends to the rest of the system and also affects life on our planet.
Flying through one of the most powerful coronal mass ejections (CMEs) in history, the spacecraft confirmed a theory that had been in development for decades. It is he who indicates the interaction of the CME with planetary dust. As we noted in this regard in HypertextThis is about key discovery for space weather prediction. This knowledge is dramatic: large eruptions in the sun’s outer atmosphere can affect the functioning of satellites, the technologies we use for communications and navigation systems. They have the potential to disrupt terrestrial electrical networks.
To this end, agency scientists note: “One question we hope to answer with the Parker probe is how some particles can be accelerated away from the Sun at mind-boggling speeds. These particles move so fast that they can reach Earth in less than half an hour. “They end up tampering with the electronics on board the satellites without warning.”
The mission, which stars NASA’s Parker probe, also focuses on coronal heating problem. “Temperatures (in this region) rise to more than 1 million degrees Celsius, while the surface of the Sun below boils at a “moderate” temperature of 5000°C. “The reason why this happens remains one of the biggest unanswered questions in astrophysics,” they comment.
Background, satellites and upcoming plans for NASA’s Parker Probe
The introduction of this instrument into the dedicated arena has brought progress over the advances achieved previously by spacecraft. Helios 2which came within 43 million kilometers of the Sun in 1976. For comparison, Mercury, the closest planet to the star, orbits at a distance of about 58 million kilometers from the solar surface.
Interesting to note How NASA’s Parker Probe Holds Up on the way to the Sun. The main thing is to understand the difference between heat and temperature. The latter measures the speed at which particles move, while the former measures the total amount of energy they transfer. “The corona is incredibly thin and there are very few particles that transfer energy. So even though the particles are moving fast (high temperature), they don’t actually transfer much energy to the spacecraft (low temperature).”
In a popular article, NASA explains that this concept can be understood through the following example. It’s the difference between putting your hand in a lit oven or a pot of boiling water.
In addition, the ship has a developed design so as not to melt into space. It is equipped with a heat shield almost 12 centimeters thick, the details of which we see in the video. It consists of a carbon composite foam sandwiched between two plates also made of carbon. It’s so efficient that while the front gets temperatures of around 1400 degrees Celsius, the instruments behind fresh, at a pleasant temperature of 30 ºC. In addition, solar panels have a water circulation system. On the other hand, it has seven sensors on the sides of the heat shield that alert the central computer when it should adjust its position.
How is it in our HypertextNASA’s Parker probe isn’t the only one trying to uncover solar intrigue. The European Space Agency (ESA) is doing the same with the Solar Orbiter spacecraft. For its part, the Indian Space Agency recently launched a mission that aims to send a satellite to a location known as L1, located 1.5 million kilometers from Earth, which will allow uninterrupted viewing of the Sun.
NASA and ESA’s plans are moving forward in turn. “The ability to use both Solar Orbiter and the Parker Solar Probe really opened up a whole new dimension,” said Gary Zank, a researcher at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, US, and co-author of the recently published study. V Letters from an Astrophysical Journalwhich jointly analyzes the data.
Meanwhile, NASA’s Parker probe continues its journey. At each approach, known as perihelion, it will equal or exceed its own elevations. After the aforementioned 7.26 million kilometers of distance from the Sun, reached at the end of September, it is expected to reach only 6.2 million kilometers. Its acceleration will also increase: according to scientists, it will reach 700,000 kilometers per hour. In principle, it is expected to operate until the end of 2025, thus achieving a useful life of seven years.
Source: Hiper Textual
