Yahoo - AFP, Kerry SHERIDAN, June 1, 2017
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| The Parker Solar Probe is set to orbit within 3.9 million miles of the sun's surface, where temperatures exceed 2,500 Fahrenheit (1,377 Celsius) |
A new NASA
mission aims to brush by the sun, coming closer than any spacecraft in history
to its scorching heat and radiation in order to reveal how stars are made, the
US space agency said Wednesday.
After
liftoff from Kennedy Space Center in Florida in July 2018, the Parker Solar
Probe will become the first to fly directly into the sun's atmosphere, known as
the corona.
The plan
for the unmanned spacecraft is to orbit within 3.9 million miles (6.3 million
kilometers) of the sun's surface.
Temperatures
in that region exceed 2,500 Fahrenheit (1,377 Celsius), for which the
spacecraft is equipped with a 4.5-inch-thick (11.43 cm) carbon-composite
shield.
Roughly the
size of a small car, the probe will make seven flybys of the sun over a
seven-year period, in what NASA described as a "mission of extremes."
Traveling
at a speed of 430,000 mph, the spacecraft will move fast -- like going from New
York City to Tokyo in less than a minute.
Scientists
hope its data will improve forecasts of solar storms and space weather events
that affect life on Earth, satellites and astronauts in space.
- Time for
a visit -
The
spacecraft will measure plasma waves and high-energy particles, and carry a
white light imager to capture images of the structures through which it is
flying, according to Nicola Fox, mission project scientist at the Johns Hopkins
University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.
"We
will brush closely by it," she said at an event in Chicago to unveil the
mission, which NASA has touted as promising to provide humanity's closest-ever
observations of a star.
"You
can learn so much from looking out the window," Fox said. "You can
see the sun is shining, you can see the birds are singing. But until you
actually go out, you have no idea quite how hot it is out there or how windy it
is, or what the conditions are like."
"I
think we have really come as far as we can with looking at things and now it is
time to go up and pay it a visit," she added.
A 20-day
launch window for the spacecraft's liftoff atop a Delta IV Heavy rocket opens
July 31, 2018.
Re-named
after astrophysicist
Initially
called Solar Probe Plus, the mission was renamed after the astrophysicist
Eugene Parker, 89, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago.
He
published the first paper to describe solar wind -- the high-speed matter and
magnetism constantly escaping the sun -- in 1958.
"This
is the first time NASA has named a spacecraft for a living individual,"
said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission
Directorate in Washington.
"It's
a testament to the importance of his body of work, founding a new field of
science that also inspired my own research and many important science questions
NASA continues to study and further understand every day."
Parker, who
is days away from his 90th birthday, described the mission as "very
exciting."
"One
would like to have some more detailed measurements of what's going on in the
solar wind," he said.
"I'm
sure that there will be some surprises," he added. "There
always are."
A real scorcher: NASA probe to fly into sun's atmosphere https://t.co/1UkAU86tVR pic.twitter.com/7KjKZ8db0Y— AFP news agency (@AFP) June 1, 2017
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