
NASA Parker Solar Probe He spends Christmas Eve trying to make history by flying by The sun than ever before – an astonishing technological achievement that scientists liken to the historic Apollo moon landing in 1969.
At 6:53 a.m. ET on Tuesday (December 24), the car-sized spacecraft was scheduled to approach within 3.8 million miles (6.1 million kilometers) of the sun’s surface, nearly 10 times closer than Mercury’s orbit around the star. The probe was traveling at an astonishing 430,000 miles per hour (690,000 kilometers per hour), fast enough to travel from Tokyo to Washington, D.C., in less than a minute. Breaking her own record As the fastest thing ever made by man in history.
“For now, Parker Solar Probe has achieved what we designed the mission to do,” Nicola FoxThe associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., said in a statement to NASA video It was released on December 24. “It’s just a moment” Yay! “We did it.”
The Mission Control Center cannot communicate with the probe during this time due to its proximity to the sun, and will only know the extent of the spacecraft’s movement in the early hours of December 27 after the beacon signal confirms the success of the flight and the general condition of the spacecraft. . Images collected during the flyby will reach Earth in early January, followed by science data later in the month when the probe swoops away from the sun. Nour RawafiHe, a project scientist for the mission, told reporters at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) earlier this month.
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“We can’t wait to receive the first status update from the spacecraft and start receiving science data in the coming weeks.” Eric PosnerParker Solar Probe program scientist at NASA Headquarters in A statement.
He added: “No man-made object has ever passed this close to the star, so Parker will return data from uncharted territory.” Nick Behnkendirector of Parker Solar Probe mission operations at the Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland.
HAPPENING NOW: NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is approaching its closest ever approach to the Sun! 🛰️ ☀️ More on this historic moment from @NASAScienceAA Nicola Fox 👇 Follow Parker’s journey: https://t.co/MtDPCEK6w6#3point8 pic.twitter.com/Bq85XFa1QSDecember 24, 2024
Parker was launched in 2018 to help solve some of the biggest mysteries about our Sun, such as why the Sun’s outer layer, the corona, gets hot as it moves away from the Sun’s surface, and what processes accelerate charged particles to near-light speeds. In addition to revolutionizing our understanding of the Sun, the probe also took rare close-up shots of passing comets and studied the surface of Venus.
On Christmas Eve, scientists expect the probe to have flown through plumes of plasma still attached to the Sun, and they hope to observe solar flares occurring simultaneously due to… Increased turmoil On the surface of the Sun, creating breathtaking but also disruptive aurora borealis on Earth Communications systems And other technology.
“The sun does things differently than it did when we first set off.” Nicoline Viala research associate on the WISPR instrument aboard Parker Solar Probe, told reporters at the AGU meeting. “This is really cool because it produces different types of solar wind and solar storms.”
Parker’s 4.5-inch-thick heat shield is designed to withstand temperatures up to 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,371 degrees Celsius), thanks in part to a specially designed white coating that will reflect much of the sun’s heat and help keep the spacecraft’s instruments in position. comfortable. Room temperature.
But scientists expect Parker to see temperatures about 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (982 degrees Celsius) cooler. Elizabeth CongdonThe lead engineer of the probe’s thermal protection system told reporters at the Arabian Gulf University.
“It’s really cool to see all the science that has been enabled by the fact that we were over-prepared.”