THROUGH THE EYES OF NASA'S PARKER SOLAR PROBE
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NASA's historic Parker Solar Probe mission is revolutionizing our understanding of the Sun, where changing conditions can propagate out into the solar system, affecting Earth and other worlds. Parker Solar Probe travels through the Sun’s atmosphere, closer to the surface than any spacecraft before it, facing brutal heat and radiation conditions to provide humanity with the closest-ever observations of a star.
Parker Solar Probe performs its scientific investigations in a hazardous region of intense heat and solar radiation. The spacecraft will fly close enough to the Sun to watch the solar wind speed up from subsonic to supersonic, and it will fly though the birthplace of the highest-energy solar particles.
To perform these unprecedented investigations, the spacecraft and instruments are protected from the Sun’s heat by a 4.5-inch-thick (11.43 cm) carbon-composite shield, which needs to withstand temperatures outside the spacecraft that reach nearly 2,500 F (1,377 C).
On August 13, 2021 at 5:50 a.m. mission controllers saw that the spacecraft called Parker Solar Prove was still functioning after being close to the sun. This was the closest that any spacecraft has ever been to the sun. The project was first announced in 2009 and it cost about 1.5 billion US dollars. A fun fact about the name of this spacecraft is it was the first spacecraft named after a person, Eugene Newman Parker. It was about 6.5 million miles away from the sun. The probe is the first probe to be close to the sun. Currently, it is only about fifteen million miles away from it. Many scientists who worked on this parker solar probe believe that it is the beginning of a revolution to discover our solar system and even over that in the near future.
This is a model of the Parker Solar Probe that you can move around and look at:
Scroll down the scroll bars to view this model in mobile.
I Portrayed above is a rendered, interactable 3D model of the distinguished Parker Solar Probe I
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PARKER SOLAR PROBE
The Spacecraft is protected from the heat and radiation of the Sun by a solar shield. It is 2.3m(7ft 7in) in diameter. It is 11.4 cm(4.5 in) thick and it is made of reinforced carbon-carbon composite to withstand temperatures of around 2500. This is a picture of what the solar shield looked like.
This project is only short term because the Park Probe spacecraft will be only for a limit of time since it will eventually break down from the radiation of the sun which will break the materials, electronics, and communication. The radiation of the sun is very powerful and this is the first testing model. This is why we will need more great minds to discover new models that would last longer and be able to discover more about the sun.
The Parker Probe mission design actually uses some gravity help from Venus in order to reach a speed of around 6 * 10^6 km. The spacecraft actually has to go through Venus for seven years to shrink its elliptical orbit around the Sun, so that it is a total of 24 orbits.
The distance of the probe matters and after 0.25 AU(Astronomical Units) the probe is hard to receive signal from. The rest of the orbit is used to transmit the data that was from the science phase. But sometimes the communication is blocked by the sun and it will not work.
HOW ARE MISSIONS STUDYING THE SUN HELPFUL TO US ?
SOLAR SCIENCE
NASA studies the Sun for numerous reasons.
The Sun’s variable radiation influences the habitability of Earth, which can be either be helpful or detrimental to life.
The accompanying energy and plasma the Sun sends out, can create changes in the space weather around us and interfere with our space technology and communications systems.
The Sun is the only star we can study up close, and can inform our research of other stars throughout the universe.
SPACE WEATHER
The Sun’s constant outflow of solar wind fills space with a thin and tenuous wash of particles, fields, and plasma.
The solar wind, along with other solar events like giant explosions called coronal mass ejections, influences the very nature of space and can interact with the magnetic systems of Earth and other worlds. Such effects also change the radiation environment through which our spacecraft – and, one day, our astronauts headed to the Moon and to Mars – travel. Such space weather can interfere with satellite electronics, communications and GPS signals, and even – when extreme – utility grids on Earth.
MAGNETOSPHERE
The magnetosphere is a bubble of magnetic fields that surrounds Earth, created by the natural magnetism of the planet. The magnetosphere protects humans on Earth from incoming energy from the Sun, however it does change shape and size in response to such space weather, and these fluctuations can degrade communication signals and cause unexpected electrical surges in power grids. NASA studies the magnetosphere to better understand its role in our space environment. By studying this space environment close to home, we can better understand the nature of space throughout the universe. Such research helps unravel the fundamental physics of space, which is dominated by complex electromagnetic interactions unlike what we experience day-to-day on Earth.
SOLAR WIND
Solar Wind may sound confusing but it is plasma that is continuously ejected from the sun's surface into and through interplanetary space. This means plasma, which is from high temperatures that is spread around space around the sun for miles and even to the earth. In the outer layer of the sun, the plasma of the outer layer can not be hold by the gravity that normally holds the sun together. This causes the plasma to go out around the sun.
IMPORTANCE OF PARKER PROBE
The first it is helping with sending the first man and woman into the woman in 2024. This is called the Artemis Program and it is greatly helping us understand one of the problems that would cause a short life for them - the sun. We also now see the solar wind that is around us. This is important because before we saw this from far away but this is different. It is like seeing a stream from far away but also seeing it once in a closer views. This is a lot more different. Astronauts are learning more information on why solar winds only react with the flips of the magnetic field up to Mercury. The Park Solar Probe started having solar wind when it was around 20 million miles away from the sun. There are also a few more particles that the sun gives that may be dangerous to the astronauts in space. The dust also seemed to thin out around 7 million miles away from the sun. You may ask why? The sun's heat burns away the dust that may turn it into solar wind. This is still a problem but scientists have learned that from this. Another important point to make is this mission is also helping us understand why solar wind happen and more about stars and how the magnetic field would happen around the star.
THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT PARKER SOLAR PROBE.
Weighing around 1,400 pounds, the Parker Solar Probe is relatively light for a spacecraft, but it launches into space aboard one of the world's most powerful rockets, the United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy. This is because flying to the Sun takes a lot of energy - in fact 55 times more energy than flying to Mars.
Any object launched from Earth begins to move approximately at the same speed and in the same direction as the Earth - 67,000 miles per hour sideways. To get closer to the Sun, Parker Solar Probe must lose most of this lateral velocity, and a strong start is a good start.
2. First Stop: Venus!
Parker Solar Probe is heading for the Sun, but flies past Venus on the way. This is not for sightseeing - Parker will perform Venus' gravity assist to bring its orbit closer to the Sun. Unlike most gravity assistants, Parker actually slows down, shifting some of its orbital energy to Venus so it can get closer to the Sun.
But one is not enough. Parker Solar Probe will perform similar maneuvers six more times in its seven-year mission!
3. Closer to the Sun than Ever
The Parker Solar Probe will fly 3.83 million miles from the surface of the Sun when it nears the end of its seven-year main mission. It may seem distant, but think about it this way: if you put the Earth and the Sun at opposite ends of the college football pitch, the Parker Solar Probe would be four yards from the Sun's end zone. The current record holder was a spacecraft called Helios 2, which traveled 27 million miles, or about 30 yards. Mercury orbits the sun approximately 36 million miles away.
This places Parker in the sun's corona, the dynamic part of its atmosphere that scientists believe is key to understanding most of the sun's activities.
4. Faster than any man-made object, the
Parker Solar Probe will also break the record for the fastest spacecraft in history. In its final orbits closest to the sun, the spacecraft will reach speeds of up to 430,000 miles per hour. That's enough to get from New York to Tokyo in less than a minute!
5. Uncovering the Secrets of the Solar Wind
Although Dr. Parker predicted the solar wind 60 years ago, there are many things we do not understand. We now know that the solar wind consists of two different streams: fast and slow. We have identified the source of the rapid solar wind, but the slow solar wind is a big mystery.
Right now, our only measurements of the solar wind are near Earth after it has traveled tens of millions of miles to merge, cool, and mix. Parker measurements of the solar wind, just a few million miles from the sun's surface, will reveal new details that should help shed light on the processes that cause it to accelerate into space.
6. Studying near-light speed particles
Another question we hope to answer with the Parker Solar Probe is how some particles can be accelerated from the Sun at astonishing speeds - more than half the speed of light or more than 90,000 miles per second. These particles move so fast that they can reach Earth in less than half an hour, so they can interfere with the electronics aboard the satellites without the slightest warning.
All the images used in this website are taken from NASA sources and from google resources.