Nasa mission to study Sun and its dangers
PARKER SOLAR PROBE BEGINS SEVEN-YEAR ODYSSEY TO UNLOCK THE STAR’S SECRETS
It was dark on Earth when Nasa’s Parker Solar Probe launched on its journey to endless day. The first spacecraft designed to swoop by a star took flight from Cape Canaveral, Florida, early yesterday. A roaring Delta IV Heavy rocket carried the probe out of Earth’s atmosphere. Next stop: A loop past Venus to rendezvous with the Sun.
The source of all light and life on Earth is also the source of one of its biggest natural threats: space weather. The Sun’s atmosphere regularly erupts with fastmoving flashes of protons and explosions of energetic particles that can hit Earth within minutes and disrupt radio communication, interfere with GPS, and fry the electric grid. A “worstcase scenario” space weather event could cause more damage than Hurricanes Katrina, Harvey and Sandy combined.
“It sounds like science fiction,” said National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration meteorologist William Murtagh, who heads the Space Weather Prediction Center. “But it’s something that’s not only possible but very likely to happen in the not-too-distant future.”
Nasa’s seven-year mission should take the spacecraft closer to the Sun than any humanmade object has gone before. It eventually will get within 6 million kilometres of the Sun’s surface, staying comfortably cool despite the extreme heat and radiation, and allowing scientists to vicariously explore the Sun in a way never before possible.
Murtagh says the probe may help us prepare for the hazards the Sun may throw at us in the future. “The energetic particles within a coronal mass ejection (CME) can penetrate the walls of spacecraft and pose a radiation risk to astronauts and the technology they depend on. They can interfere with satellites, disrupting radio communication and GPS. And if a CME hits our planet’s magnetosphere at the right angle, it can generate powerful waves of electricity within the Earth.”
ANasa probe zoomed towards the sun yesterday on an unprecedented quest to get closer to our star than anything ever sent before.
As soon as this fall, the Parker Solar Probe will fly straight through the wispy edges of the sun’s corona, or outer atmosphere, that was visible during last August’s total solar eclipse. It eventually will get within 6 million kilometres of the surface in the years ahead, staying comfortably cool despite the extreme heat and radiation, and allowing scientists to vicariously explore the sun in a way never before possible.
No wonder scientists consider it the coolest, hottest mission under the sun, and what better day to launch to the sun than Sunday, as Nasa noted.
“All I can say is, ‘Wow, here we go.’ We’re in for some learning over the next several years,” said Eugene Parker, the 91-year-old astrophysicist for whom the spacecraft is named.
Protected by a revolutionary new carbon heat shield and other high-tech wonders, the spacecraft will zip past Venus in October. That will set up the first solar encounter in November.
Altogether, the Parker probe will make 24 close approaches to the sun on the seven-year, $1.5 billion undertaking.
For the second straight day, thousands of spectators jammed the launch site in the middle of the night as well as surrounding towns, including Parker and his family. He proposed the existence of solar wind — a steady, supersonic stream of particles blasting off the sun — 60 years ago.
Shattering records
Parker, the probe, will start shattering records this autumn. On its very first brush with the sun, it will come within 25 million kilometres. By the time Parker gets to its 22nd, 23rd and 24th orbits of the sun in 2024 and 2025, it will be even deeper into the corona and travelling at a record-breaking 690,000 kilometres per hour. Nothing from Earth has hit that kind of speed.