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The Parker Solar Probe will zoom closer to the sun on Tuesday during a record-breaking flyby, coming within 3.8 million miles (6.1 million kilometers) of the sun’s surface during humanity’s closest approach to the star.
The unmanned spacecraft will fly at 430,000 miles per hour (692,000 kilometers per hour), fast enough to get from Washington, D.C., to Tokyo in less than a minute, NASA said. This quick flyby will make the spacecraft the fastest man-made object in history, officials shared on Dec. 16 during a NASA Science Live presentation on YouTube.
The mission has been building toward this historic milestone since its launch on August 12, 2018. The event was also attended by the spacecraft’s namesake, astrophysicist Dr. Eugene Parker, a pioneer in the field of solar research, heliophysics.
Parker was the first living person to have a spaceship named after him. The astrophysicist whose research revolutionized humanity’s understanding of the Sun and interplanetary space died in March 2022 at the age of 94. But he was able to see first-hand how the probe still helps solve the mysteries of the sun, more than 65 years after it was originally planned. .
The spacecraft successfully flew through the sun’s corona, or upper atmosphere, to sample particles and the star’s magnetic field in December 2021, making it the first spacecraft to “touch the sun.”
For the past six years of the spacecraft’s seven-year mission, the Parker Solar Probe has collected data to enlighten scientists about some of the sun’s greatest mysteries.
Solar physicists have long wondered how the solar wind, a constant stream of particles emitted by the Sun, arises and why the Sun’s corona is much hotter than the surface. .
Scientists also want to understand how coronal mass ejections, the large clouds of ionized gas called plasma and magnetic fields that eject from the sun’s outer atmosphere, are composed.
If these emissions are directed toward Earth, they can cause geomagnetic storms, large disturbances of the Earth’s magnetic field, which can affect satellites, power, and communications infrastructure on Earth.
Now it’s time for Parker’s closest and final flight. This could provide answers to these persistent questions, and potentially uncover new mysteries as we explore uncharted regions of the sun.
“Parker Solar Probe is changing the field of solar physics,” Helen Winters, Parker Solar Probe project manager at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, said in a statement. “After years of enduring the heat and dust of the solar system’s interior and experiencing massive amounts of solar energy and radiation never before experienced by a spacecraft, the Parker Solar Probe continues to grow.”
Parker’s flyby at about 6:53 a.m. ET on Christmas Eve marked the first of the spacecraft’s last three closest approaches, the other two on March 22 and June 19. expected to occur.
NASA says the rover will be so close that if the distance between Earth and the sun is the length of an American football field, the rover would be about 4 yards from the end zone.
At this distance, the spacecraft could not only fly through plumes of plasma, but also through solar eruptions if ejected from the Sun.
The spacecraft is built to withstand extreme solar conditions, and has flown through coronal mass ejections in the past without harming it, said Parker Solar Exploration Project scientist Noor Rawafi.
The spacecraft is equipped with a carbon foam shield that is 4.5 inches (11.4 centimeters) thick and 8 feet (2.4 meters) wide. The shield was tested on Earth before launch and was able to withstand temperatures of nearly 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit (about 1,400 degrees Celsius). On Christmas Eve, the shield can be exposed to temperatures of up to 1,800 F (980 C).
During this time, the spacecraft’s interior remains at a comfortable temperature, allowing its electronic systems and scientific instruments to operate as expected. A unique cooling system designed by the Applied Physics Laboratory pumps water into the ship’s solar array, keeping it at a steady 320 F (160 C) even while close to the sun. keep it.
The spacecraft will perform the flyby autonomously, as Mission Control cannot make contact with the spacecraft due to its proximity to the Sun.
After its closest approach, around midnight Thursday through Friday, Parker will send a signal called a beacon tone back to air traffic controllers to confirm the flyby was successful, Rawafi said.
He said the beacon tone is a limited piece of data that conveys the overall health of the spacecraft.
Rawafi said the vast amount of data and images collected during the flyby will not be made available to controllers until Parker is in orbit and away from the sun, which is expected to occur in mid-January, about three weeks later. It is said that
Just over a year after the Parker Solar Probe first launched, the sun has entered a new solar cycle. At the time of Parker’s closest approach, the sun is at its solar maximum, meaning the mission had the opportunity to witness most of the solar cycle and the sun’s changes in elevation, said C.・Dr. Alex Young said. Science Award in the Solar Physics Sciences Division at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Scientists from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the International Solar Cycle Prediction Panel announced in October that the sun has reached its solar maximum, or the peak of activity within its 11-year cycle.
At the peak of the solar cycle, the sun’s magnetic poles reverse and the sun transitions from a calm to an active state. Experts track increases in solar activity by counting the number of sunspots that appear on the sun’s surface. The sun is expected to remain active for about a year.
The increase in solar activity was evident this year when two large auroras were seen on Earth in May and October. At this time, a coronal mass ejection from the Sun was directed toward Earth. Solar storms are also responsible for producing the aurora borealis (Aurora borealis, Northern Lights, South Pole Aurora, South Pole Aurora) that dance around the Earth’s poles. When particles energized by coronal mass ejections reach Earth’s magnetic field, they interact with gases in the atmosphere and create different colored lights in the sky.
“Both storms allowed us to see the aurora borealis deep into the United States,” Young said. “But the May storm was a particularly strong storm. In fact, this may be a once-in-100 to 500-year event, and it caused the aurora very close to the equator, which is very It was a global event that was seen by millions, and hopefully billions of people, and may never happen again.”
The data collected by Parker Solar Probe could help scientists better understand solar storms and how to predict them, Young said.
“The Sun is the only star we can see in detail, but we can actually go and measure it directly,” Young said. “This is a laboratory in our solar system that studies all the other stars in the universe, and the billions of stars that may or may not be similar to the planets in our solar system. You can learn how things interact with other planets.
With that in mind, Rawafi said he hopes the sun will put on a great show during the spacecraft’s approach, allowing scientists to gain insight into the sun’s activity. .
“Good luck, San,” Rawafi said. “Tell me the most powerful event you can run. Parker Solar Probe can handle it.”
