Nasa prepares to fly probe into the Sun’s scorching atmosphere
Spacecraft to study unpredictable solar winds, which cause disturbances in Earth’s magnetic field and can play havoc with communications satellites
Nasa is preparing to send a probe closer to the Sun than any other spacecraft has ventured, enduring wicked heat while zooming through the solar corona to study this outermost part of the stellar atmosphere that gives rise to the solar wind.
The Parker Solar Probe, a robotic spacecraft the size of a small car, is slated to launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida, with August 6 targeted as the launch date for the planned seven-year mission. It is set to fly into the Sun’s corona within 6.1 million km (3.8 million miles) from the solar surface, seven times closer than any other spacecraft.
“To send a probe where you haven’t been before is ambitious. To send it into such brutal conditions is highly ambitious,” Nicola Fox, a project scientist from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, told a news conference on Friday.
The previous closest pass to the Sun was by a probe called Helios 2, which in 1976 came within 43 million km. By way of comparison, the average distance from the Sun for Earth is 150 million km.
The corona gives rise to the solar wind, a continuous flow of charged particles that permeates the solar system. Unpredictable solar winds cause disturbances in our planet’s magnetic field and can play havoc with communications technology on Earth. Nasa hopes the findings will enable scientists to forecast changes in Earth’s space environment.