{"id":44792,"date":"2024-12-20T18:33:24","date_gmt":"2024-12-20T10:33:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/were-about-to-fly-a-spacecraft-into-the-sun-for-the-first-time\/"},"modified":"2024-12-20T18:33:24","modified_gmt":"2024-12-20T10:33:24","slug":"were-about-to-fly-a-spacecraft-into-the-sun-for-the-first-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/were-about-to-fly-a-spacecraft-into-the-sun-for-the-first-time\/","title":{"rendered":"We\u2019re about to fly a spacecraft into the Sun for the first time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the Solar cycle,<\/em><\/p>\n

Not a sunspot was stirring, not even a burst;<\/em><\/p>\n

The stockings were all hung by the corona with care,<\/em><\/p>\n

In hopes that the Parker Solar Probe would soon be there. <\/em><\/p>\n

Almost no one ever writes about the Parker Solar Probe anymore.<\/p>\n

Sure, the spacecraft got some attention when it launched.  It is, after all, the fastest moving object that humans have ever built. At its maximum speed, goosed by the gravitational pull of the Sun, the probe reaches a velocity of 430,000 miles per hour, or more than one-sixth of 1 percent the speed of light. That kind of speed would get you from New York City to Tokyo in less than a minute.<\/p>\n

And the Parker Solar Probe also has the distinction of being the first NASA spacecraft named after a living person. At the time of its launch, in August 2018, physicist Eugene Parker was 91 years old.<\/p>\n

But in the six years since the probe has been zipping through outer space and flying by the Sun? Not so much. Let\u2019s face it, the astrophysical properties of the Sun and its complicated structure are not something that most people think about on a daily basis.<\/p>\n

However, the smallish probe\u2014it masses less than a metric ton, and its scientific payload is only about 110 pounds (50 kg)\u2014is about to make its star turn. Quite literally. On Christmas Eve, the Parker Solar Probe will make its closest approach yet to the Sun. It will come within just 3.8 million miles (6.1 million km) of the solar surface, flying into the solar atmosphere for the first time.<\/p>\n

Yeah, it\u2019s going to get pretty hot. Scientists estimate that the probe\u2019s heat shield will endure temperatures in excess of 2,500\u00b0 Fahrenheit (1,371\u00b0 C) on Christmas Eve, which is pretty much the polar opposite of the North Pole.<\/p>\n

Going straight to the source<\/h2>\n

I spoke with the chief of science at NASA, Nicky Fox, to understand why the probe is being tortured so. Before moving to NASA headquarters, Fox was the project scientist for the Parker Solar Probe, and she explained that scientists really want to understand the origins of the solar wind.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

This is the stream of charged particles that emanate from the Sun\u2019s outermost layer, the corona. Scientists have been wondering about this particular mystery for longer than half a century, Fox explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cQuite simply, we want to find the birthplace of the solar wind,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Way back in the 1950s, before we had satellites or spacecraft to measure the Sun\u2019s properties, Parker predicted the existence of this solar wind. The scientific community was pretty skeptical about this idea\u2014many ridiculed Parker, in fact\u2014until the Mariner 2 mission started measuring the solar wind in 1962.<\/p>\n

As the scientific community began to embrace Parker\u2019s theory, they wanted to know more about the solar wind, which is such a fundamental constituent of the entire Solar System. Although the solar wind is invisible to the naked eye, when you see an aurora on Earth, that\u2019s the solar wind interacting with Earth\u2019s magnetosphere in a particularly violent way.<\/p>\n

Only it is expensive to build a spacecraft that can get to the Sun. And really difficult, too.<\/p>\n

Now, you might naively think that it\u2019s the easiest thing in the world to send a spacecraft to the Sun. After all, it\u2019s this big and massive object in the sky, and it\u2019s got a huge gravitational field. Things should want<\/em> to go there because of this attraction, and you ought to be able to toss any old thing into the sky, and it will go toward the Sun. The problem is that you don\u2019t actually want your spacecraft to fly into the Sun or be going so fast that it passes the Sun and keeps moving. So you\u2019ve got to have a pretty powerful rocket to get your spacecraft in just the right orbit.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a dynamic spacecraft<\/h2>\n

And then you\u2019ve got to have a pretty sophisticated spacecraft that can survive flying into the atmosphere of a star. Because it\u2019s super hot and there\u2019s this hellish radiation all around, not to mention plasma.<\/p>\n

But you can\u2019t get around the fact that to observe the origin of the solar wind, you\u2019ve got to get inside the corona. Fox explained that it\u2019s like trying to understand a forest by looking in from the outside. One actually needs to go into the forest and find a clearing. However, we can\u2019t really stay inside the forest very long\u2014because it\u2019s on fire.<\/p>\n

So, the Parker Solar Probe had to be robust enough to get near the Sun and then back into the coldness of space. Therein lies another challenge. The spacecraft is going from this incredibly hot environment into a cold one and then back again multiple times.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you think about just heating and cooling any kind of material, they either go brittle and crumble, or they may go like elastic with a continual change of property,\u201d Fox said. \u201cObviously, with a spacecraft like this, you can\u2019t have it making a major property change. You also need something that\u2019s lightweight, and you need something that\u2019s durable.\u201d<\/p>\n

The science instruments had to be hardened as well. As the probe flies into the Sun there\u2019s an instrument known as a Faraday cup that hangs out to measure ion and electron fluxes from the solar wind. Unique technologies were needed. The cup itself is made from sheets of Titanium-Zirconium-Molybdenum, with a melting point of about 4,260\u00b0 Fahrenheit (2,349\u00b0 C). Another challenge came from the electronic wiring, as normal cables would melt. So, a team at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory grew sapphire crystal tubes in which to suspend the wiring, and made the wires from niobium.<\/p>\n

Anyway, all that is to say, it took a lot of time, money, and technological breakthroughs in exotic materials to get a spacecraft that was up to the task. And on Christmas Eve, we\u2019re finally going to see what the Parker Solar Probe has got.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the Solar cycle, Not a sunspot was stirring, not even a burst; The stockings were all hung by the corona with care, In hopes that the Parker Solar Probe would soon be there.  Almost no one ever writes about the Parker Solar Probe anymore. Sure, the spacecraft […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44794,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1863,21],"class_list":["post-44792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-parker-solar-probe","tag-space"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44792"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}