A NASA Spacecraft Just Touched The Sun And Lived To Tell About It

A NASA Spacecraft Just ‘Touched’ The Sun And Lived To Tell About It

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The Parker Solar Probe has become the first spacecraft to “touch” the Sun after successfully flying through the solar corona and emerging unscathed.

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A NASA Spacecraft Just Touched The Sun And Lived To Tell About It

Three years after NASA’s Parker Solar Probe launched into space, it has become the first spacecraft to “touch” the Sun after successfully flying through the solar corona and emerging unscathed. Named after astrophysicist Eugene Parker, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe launched in 2018 with a mission to gain deeper insights into the evolution of the Sun. Scientists also hope that it will be able to answer questions about solar flares that often negatively impact life on planet earth.

The spacecraft is also expected to examine the reason for the drastic difference in temperatures of the corona and the surface of the Sun. While the corona has a temperature of around one million degrees Kelvin, the surface of the Sun is said to be around 6,000-degrees Kelvin. As part of its mission, the Parker Solar Probe has already been able to observe a phenomenon called ‘switchbacks,’ or sudden 180-degree flips in the Sun’s magnetic field, helping scientists determine that they originate from the solar surface. It was only theorized earlier but never accurately measured.

According to research published in the Physical Review Letters, the Parker Solar Probe has successfully flown through the Sun’s outer atmosphere, known as the corona. According to NASA, it is the first time a spacecraft has entered the Solar corona and touched the atmosphere of the Sun. While the official announcement from NASA came at the 2021 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in New Orleans on Tuesday, the actual feat happened back on April 28, 2021, when the Probe spent as much as five hours inside the solar corona, observing what lies within the Sun’s super-heated atmosphere.

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“Monumental Moment For Solar Science”

Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, described the feat as a “monumental moment for solar science.” He also said the development would not only provide researchers with deeper insights into the Sun’s evolution and its impacts on the solar system but also potentially reveal more information about other stars in the rest of the universe. The Parker Solar Probe had earlier made several notable new discoveries, including on coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and solar flares that create space weather, as well as how plasma explosions and debris clouds can disturb spacecraft operations following ‘hypervelocity’ dust impacts.

Overall, the Parker Solar Probe is NASA’s most ambitious program ever to study the Sun, and it has not only survived but thrived in the super-heated atmosphere of the earth’s nearest star. As a result, it is expected to get even closer to the Sun in the coming years, venturing to within 4.3 million miles (6.9 million km) from the solar center. Before the Parker Solar Probe embarked on its journey, the closest a spacecraft had ever reached the Sun’s surface was 26.55 million miles (42.73 million km). That record was set by the Helios 2 in April 1976.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/nasa-parker-solar-probe-flew-inside-sun-corona/

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