05 June, 2017
The probe will carry four instruments created to study solar winds, plasma, magnetic fields and energetic particles when it launches sometime between July and August 2018.
The spacecraft will be subjected to extreme heat and radiation from the corona, where temperatures are almost 1,377C (2,500F).
"This temperature inversion is a big mystery that no one has been able to explain", says Nicola Fox, project scientist for the Parker Solar Probe, the NASA mission that aims to finally get close to the sun.
A new NASA mission aims to brush by the sun, coming closer than any spacecraft in history to its scorching heat and radiation in order to reveal how stars are made, the United States space agency said Wednesday, May 31. It will fly into the outermost part of the sun's atmosphere, "corona", for the first time. According to CNBC, "the probe will move more than 430,000 miles per hour (the equivalent of traveling from NY to Tokyo in less than a minute) and be seven times closer to the sun than any previous spacecraft".
At that point, temperatures would be exceeding 1,377 degrees Celsius. "At its closest passes the spacecraft must survive solar intensity of about 475 times what spacecraft experience while orbiting Earth" NASA said.
Solar winds affect Earth in several ways, including the planet's magnetic fields and what's known as space weather.
NASA is set to announce a new mission to fly directly into the Sun's atmosphere. When Parker first started his research almost 60 years ago, Fox said, "the materials didn't exist to allow us to be able to do it". That sounds pretty far away, but it will be much closer to the sun than any spacecraft has traveled before. To do so, NASA has covered the probe with an 11.5cm thick carbon-composite heat shield. This event is the first time NASA has ever named a spacecraft in honor of a living person. In fact, that's why the mission has taken so long to develop - the materials necessary had to be invented before we could send it on its way.
"It was a fundamental insight that forever changed the way in which we understood the sun, the heliosphere and in general interplanetary space", said Eric Isaacs, executive vice president for research, innovation and national laboratories at the University of Chicago. We look forward to learning all you know from your journey to the sun and back!
