NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Enters the Corona: A Historic Solar Mission

KAZI ABUL MONSUR,JOURNALIST#

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, sent to study the Sun, will come very close to the Sun today, Tuesday, December 24. According to NASA’s data, the Parker Solar Probe has orbited the Sun 21 times so far and is now set to enter the region very close to the corona today. At 6:40 AM US Eastern Time on Tuesday, the probe will enter the corona region, just 3.86 million miles from the Sun’s surface.

The Parker Solar Probe, a NASA mission launched in 2018, is on a path to get closer to the Sun than any spacecraft has ever gone. Its primary goal is to study the Sun’s environment and its atmospheric behavior. In particular, it will collect crucial data about the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, and solar wind. Scientists have not yet fully understood how the energy emitted from the Sun’s center works. The probe will also help scientists understand why the outer layers of the Sun are hotter than its core, as well as gather more information about solar wind and the Sun’s magnetic fields.

The Parker Solar Probe has been using the gravitational pull of several planets to reach closer to the Sun. It has been orbiting within the solar system, and with each pass, its speed increases as it nears the Sun.

The probe will get so close that it will come within 3.86 million miles (6.16 million kilometers) of the Sun’s surface, about 70% closer than the average distance between the Earth and the Sun. To withstand the intense heat and magnetic waves, NASA has designed an advanced shielding system for the spacecraft.

The Parker Solar Probe has already achieved significant success during the first phase of its mission. It has successfully gathered data from around the Sun, offering new insights into the Sun’s behavior and space phenomena. The data has helped scientists better understand the Sun’s temperature, magnetic field, and the origin of solar winds, which will contribute to our understanding of space science and space weather predictions.

Currently, the Parker Solar Probe is traveling at a speed of nearly 690,000 kilometers per hour (191 kilometers per second) toward the Sun’s surface. This speed is approximately 0.064% of the speed of light, making it the fastest man-made object ever created. No other human-made object has ever come so close to the Sun’s surface.

Equipped with advanced sensors, the spacecraft is collecting data on the mysterious temperature of the Sun’s corona, which NASA scientists will analyze to learn more about the temperature and many other unknown aspects of the Sun’s corona.

Scientists have observed that the Sun’s surface temperature is around 5,500-6,000 degrees Celsius, but its core temperature is an astonishing 15 million degrees Celsius. Moreover, the temperature of the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, can reach up to 1 million degrees Celsius.

Even though the Parker Solar Probe will get very close to the Sun, it is expected to encounter temperatures of about 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit. However, scientists have designed the spacecraft’s thermal shield to withstand temperatures of up to 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit. Due to the high speed and short duration of its flyby, the spacecraft is expected to withstand the heat without significant damage. Additionally, it is protected by a 11.5-centimeter-thick carbon-composite shield.

Researchers believe that the intense heating of the Sun’s corona is mainly due to the Sun’s own magnetic field, although the exact reason behind the high temperature of the corona remains a mystery.

NASA launched the 685-kilogram Parker Solar Probe mission on August 12, 2018, to conduct this in-depth study of the Sun. The spacecraft will travel about 96% of the distance from Earth to the Sun and will pass very close to the corona. During the mission, the spacecraft will lose communication with NASA’s command center, but scientists hope it will pass through solar plasma and possibly even enter the Sun’s active regions.

In the next three days, NASA will wait to see if the probe survives the extreme temperatures. If successful, the Parker Solar Probe may transmit images and data from its mission as early as January 2025. The data will provide new insights into the Sun and its magnetic field, helping scientists further study the Sun’s mysterious behavior.

The Parker Solar Probe was designed and built by NASA in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. The project cost about $1.5 billion, and the spacecraft is named after renowned astrophysicist Eugene Parker from the University of Chicago, who first proposed the theory of solar wind. Parker passed away in 2022 at the age of 94. ##Sources: NASA, Wikipedia, Space.com, NBC News.