Mission: To touch the face of the sun *
NASA’S €1.3billion solar probe raced through the Earth’s atmosphere yesterday on a seven-year mission to “kiss the face of the sun”.
To cheers from thousands of spectators, the unmanned probe was launched into orbit at 3.31am from Cape Canaveral in Florida, after take-off was delayed by a day when an alarm sounded with just one minute to lift-off.
And as the Parker Solar Probe boldly goes where no mission has gone before, it carries on board a memory card with the names of a million people who took up a NASA invitation to “kiss the sun”.
They include William Shatner, better known as Star Trek’s Captain Kirk.
The probe – the size of a small car – is set to be the fastest-moving man-made object in history, reaching 430,000mph.
That is more than two-and-a-half times the top speed reached by NASA’S Juno probe to Jupiter in 2016. The space agency’s Dr Thomas Zurbuchen, of its Science Mission Directorate, said last night: “It was a really clean launch.
“It took off like it should. Everything was exactly like we thought it would be. It really was textbook.”
The probe will send back data about the sun’s outer atmosphere, as well as on a stream of particles the star constantly blasts into space, known as solar wind.
It is set to pass through the edges of the sun’s corona – the glowing “halo” of gases visible during a full solar eclipse.
Temperatures in the corona can reach
Wow, here we go. We are in for some learning over the next few years…
DR EUGENE PARKER SPACE BOFFIN PROBE IS NAMED AFTER
3,000,000C – although at its closest approach, the outside of the probe should reach only 1,400C, the melting temperature of steel.
NASA hopes the probe will get to within 3.8 million miles of the sun’s surface, which is 23.2 million miles closer than anything previously.
Project scientist Dr Nicky Fox said: “That might not sound close – but imagine the sun and the Earth were a metre apart. Parker Solar Probe would be just four centimetres from the sun.”
Dr Fox, a British-born scientist with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, added: “We’ll also be the fastest human-made object ever, travelling around the sun at up to 430,000mph – New York to
Tokyo in less than a minute.”
The Parker probe was carried into space on a Delta IV Heavy rocket built by Boeing and Lockheed Martin, one of the most powerful rockets around.
Before separating from their payload, its third stage boosters gave the probe the kick it needed to escape Earth’s gravity fast enough to put it on course for Venus, the second planet out from the sun. After whistling past Venus in October, it will finally rendezvous with the sun in November. Over the next seven years, it will perform 24 close fly-bys of the sun. The craft is the first to be named after a living person – 91-year-old astrophysicist Eugene Parker. He faced ridicule from fellow scientists when he first described his theory of solar wind 60 years ago, aged 31. After watching yesterday’s lift-off, a delighted Dr Parker declared: “Wow, here we go. We’re in for some learning over the next several years.”
The University of Chicago professor said he had been “biting his nails” in anticipation. Photos of him, and a digital copy of his 1958 paper on solar wind, are also on board the craft.
Dr Parker’s theory of the sun “outgassing” particles was only vindicated four years after he proposed it – when Mariner 2, a NASA spacecraft also heading to Venus, detected them streaming through space.
The charged particles travel at up to 1.8million mph – reaching Earth in 40 hours and causing the “northern lights” phenomenon as they pass through the poles’ magnetic fields.
The Parker Solar Probe will measure the sun’s electrical and magnetic fields and photograph its corona, as well as identifying the particles in solar wind.
A revolutionary heat shield just 4.5 inches thick will keep the spacecraft and its instruments from destruction.
Solar wind is vital to understand as it has the potential to devastate modern technologies.
NASA Chief Scientist Jim Green said: “It’s going to be absolutely phenomenal. We’ve been wanting to do this for 60 years, ever since Eugene Parker got up and said, ‘I believe the sun is outgassing’.”
How long it would take the probe to travel from New York to Tokyo