NASA’s mission to the Sun will be equivalent to landing on the Moon – 01/04/2024 – Science

This promises to be a landmark moment in the history of space exploration.

In less than a year, on December 24, 2024, NASA’s Parker solar probe will pass by the Sun at an astonishing speed of 195 km/s.

No man-made object to date has moved so fast or come so close to our star — just 6.1 million kilometers from the “surface” of the Sun.

“Basically, we are almost landing on a star”, says one of those responsible for the Parker project, scientist Nour Raouafi.

“This will be a monumental achievement for all of Humanity. It is something equivalent to the landing on the Moon in 1969”, compares the specialist, who works at the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University, in the USA.

The Parker probe’s speed will come from the immense gravitational pull that will come into play when the device is in orbit toward the Sun.

This speed can be compared to flying from New York to London in less than 30 seconds.

The Parker probe, from the North American space agency, represents one of the most audacious missions ever conceived.

Launched in 2018, it aims to make repeated trips closer and closer to the Sun.

The maneuver that will be carried out at the end of 2024 will take Parker just 4% of the total distance between the Sun and Earth (or 149 million km).

The challenge the probe will face in doing so will be enormous. At perihelion, the point in the probe’s orbit closest to the star, the temperature will probably reach 1,400ºC.

The strategy for Parker to not stop working is to quickly enter and leave this orbit, in time to make measurements of the solar environment with a set of instruments installed behind a thick thermal shield.

The reward, researchers hope, will be groundbreaking knowledge about some of the star’s most important processes.

The main one is a possible more detailed explanation of the functioning of the corona, the Sun’s outer atmosphere.

At this stage, the probe may experience what appears to be counterintuitive overheating.

This is because the temperature of the Sun in the photosphere (the surface) is approximately 6,000°C.

However, inside the corona, the temperature can exceed an impressive million degrees (or even more).

The natural thing would be to think that the temperature would decrease as the distance from the star’s core increases. But in practice, that’s not how it works.

It is also in the corona region that the flow of charged particles — electrons, protons and heavy ions — suddenly accelerates in a supersonic wind that moves at 400 km/s.

Scientists still cannot explain this phenomenon completely. But understanding it is fundamental to improving predictions of solar behavior and “space weather”.

The latter term refers to the Sun’s powerful eruptions of particles and magnetic fields that can degrade communications on Earth and even knock out electricity grids. Radiation still poses health risks to astronauts.

“This takes on a new dimension, especially now that we are thinking about sending women and men back to the Moon and even establishing a permanent presence on the lunar surface,” adds Raouafi.

The Parker probe made one of its approaches towards the Sun on the 29th.

Three more trips of this type are planned for 2024, before the apparatus rotates around Venus on November 6th — the objective of the maneuver is to adjust the orbit curve and make December 24th, 2024 a historic occasion.

Nicky Fox is the current head of Science at NASA. Previously, she was the chief scientist of the Parker probe project.

She points out that the biggest advantage of the flyover scheduled for December 24th would be the longer time that the probe will remain in the corona.

“We don’t know what we will find, but we will be looking for waves in the solar wind associated with warming,” she told BBC News.

“I suspect we will feel many different types of waves that would point to a mix of processes that scientists have been arguing about for years.”

This year represents the culmination of the Parker mission. At the end of December, the probe will no longer be able to get close to the Sun, especially because its orbit will not allow new passes by Venus to set a new trajectory.

Furthermore, getting closer to the Sun would also pose a risk of shortening the shadow of the probe’s large protective shield, exposing Parker’s rear to intolerable temperatures.