Lift off! Nasa spacecraft rockets towards sun for closest look yet
● The Parker solar probe will fly through outer solar atmosphere
A Nasa spacecraft zoomed toward the sun yesterday on an unprecedented quest to get closer to our star than anything ever sent before.
As soon as autumn, 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 3.8 million 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.
“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, £1.3 million undertaking.
Yesterday, 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.
It was the first time Nasa named a spacecraft after someone still alive, and Parker wasn’t about to let it take off without him. Saturday morning’s launch attempt was foiled by last-minute technical trouble. But yesterday gave way to complete success.
The Delta IV Heavy rocket thundered into the pre-dawn darkness, thrilling onlookers for miles around as it climbed through a clear, star-studded sky. Nasa needed the mighty
23-story rocket, plus a third stage, to get the diminutive Parker probe – the size of a small car and well under a ton -– racing toward the sun.
From Earth, it is 93 million miles to the sun, and the Parker probe will be within four per cent of that distance at its closest. That will be seven times closer than previous spacecraft.
“Go, baby, go!” project scientist Nicola Fox of Johns Hopkins University shouted at liftoff.
It was the first rocket launch
ever witnessed by Parker, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago. He came away impressed, saying it was like looking at the Taj Mahal for years in photos and then beholding “the real thing” in India.
“I really have to turn from biting my nails in getting it launched, to thinking about all the interesting things which I don’t know yet and which will be made clear, I assume, over the next five or six or seven years,” Parker said on Nasa TV.
Nasa’s science mission chief, Thomas Zurbuchen, was thrilled not only with the launch, but Parker’s presence.
“I’m in awe,” Zurbuchen said. “What a milestone. Also what’s so cool is hanging out with Parker during all this and seeing his emotion, too.”
Parker, the probe, will start shattering records on its very first brush with the sun, it will come within 15.5 million miles, easily beating the current record of 27 million miles set by Nasa’s Helios 2 spacecraft in 1976. Zurbuchen expects the data from even this early stage to yield top science papers.
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 recordbreaking 430,000 mph.
With this first-of-its-kind mission, scientists hope to unlock the many mysteries of the sun, a yellow dwarf star around 4.5 billion years old. Among the puzzlers: Why is the corona hundreds of times hotter than the surface and why is the sun’s atmosphere continually expanding and accelerating?