The boat Parker Solar Probe of the US Space Agency (NASA) “Touched” him for the first time Helium, as spent five hours in the upper solar atmosphere, known as the corona. It is the first time that a human construct has crossed the outer limits of the Sun and made the first direct observations of phenomena (particles, magnetic forces, etc.) for which until now scientists could only make estimates.
The Parker is the alter ego of NASA’s twin Voyager spacecraft. The latter are the human constructions that have traveled farther from the Sun (and the Earth) than any other spacecraft to date, leaving behind the solar “territory”, ie the area of ​​space to which the “breath” of the Sun reaches , the solar wind. On the contrary, Parker Solar Probe has approached the “heart” of our solar system more than any other human machine.
The achievement, described as historic by NASA, happened on April 28, 2021 and has now been announced – it took a long time for the scientists to receive and thoroughly analyze the data- in a press conference at the conference of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and with a relevant publication in the journal “Physical Review Letters”. As stated by the lead researcher, professor Justin Casper of the University of Michigan, “The event marks the achievement of the primary goal of the Parker mission and a new era in understanding the physics of the crown.”
“We have finally arrived, humanity has touched the Sun”
“It simply came to our notice then. Mankind has touched the Sun. Just as the landing on the Moon allowed scientists to understand how it formed, so the touch of the Sun is a giant step for humanity“which will help us discover critical information about the star closest to us and its influence on the solar system,” said Dr. Nikola Fox, director of NASA’s Department of Solar Physics.
The boat was launched in 2018 aiming to study the Sun at a closer distance than any other spacecraft in the past, something it has achieved after successive increasingly close transits (it will do a total of 24). His entrance to the crown, beyond the so-called “Alfven limit”, in at an altitude of about 13 million kilometers above the visible surface of the Sun. (the photosphere), was reached during its eighth near transit through our star. According to APE-MPE, the cost of $ 1.5 billion Parker, which among other things is the fastest man-made object, as it moves with speed over 500,000 kilometers per hour, has already made several important discoveries.
The mystery with the crown of the Sun.
The crown hides a mystery that requires explanation: While in the lower photosphere, which is closer to the “heart” of the Sun, the temperature reaches about 6,000 degrees Celsius, in its atmosphere (crown), which is higher, the temperature can reach a few million degrees Celsius. Also, inside the crown, the outflow of charged solar particles (electrons, protons and heavy ions) suddenly accelerates and turns into the ultrasonic solar “wind”, a process that is also not well understood to date.
The next step for the boat will be to go even deeper into the atmosphere of the Sun and stay there for a longer time. Finally, in 2025, Parker is scheduled to reach a distance of only 6.2 million kilometers from the photosphere itself. The information he will collect will help, among other things, to be done in the future better forecast of space weather and magnetic “storms” caused by the Sun, which, unlike the Earth, has no solid surface at all.
Here you will see the relevant scientific publication.
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