NASA’s Parker Probe Discovers Mysterious Source of Solar Wind

A NASA space probe has penetrated the infernal atmosphere of the sun, with the aim of discovering the source of the mysterious solar wind and protecting the Earth from its potential dangers.

And the sun throws storms of solar winds of varying speed that hit everything in its path in the solar system, and it can cause damage to satellites around the Earth.

In 2018, NASA announced the launch of an unmanned spacecraft towards the sun, to fly about 21 million kilometers from the sun’s surface, in the first mission of its kind to fly into the sun’s atmosphere.

According to scientists from NASA, the solar probe (Parker) went to a high temperature at a high speed of 692 thousand kilometers per hour, equivalent to traveling the distance between New York and Tokyo in just about one minute.

The probe’s instruments detected minute structures of the solar wind generated near the photosphere, or solar surface, and captured ephemeral details that disappear once the wind blows from the corona.

1st mission to ‘touch’ the sun discovers a mysterious source of solar wind

— Live Science (@LiveScience) June 9, 2023

The solar wind is currents made up mostly of hydrogen and helium ions that constantly flow from the sun into space.

The fast solar wind blows around holes in the sun’s atmosphere and can travel at top speeds of 800 kilometers per second, twice the top speed of slow winds.

Solar physicists have long wondered what makes one type of solar wind twice as fast as another, but the Parker probe seems to have finally found the answer. The faster jets come from sudden bursts of fracturing energy released during the rapid realignment of magnetic fields.

The researchers published their findings on June 7 in the prestigious (Nature) journal, and study co-author James Drake, a professor of physics at the University of Maryland, said, “Winds carry a lot of information from the sun to Earth, so understanding the mechanism behind the solar wind is important.” For practical reasons on the ground.”

“This will affect our ability to understand how the sun releases energy and drives geomagnetic storms, which pose a threat to our communications networks.”

The solar wind is energy-charged particles emanating from the sun and spreading throughout the solar system, and as soon as it reaches one of the planets (such as Earth) it interacts with its magnetosphere, and this is what causes the phenomenon of the aurora borealis, which is usually seen from areas near the north and south poles. .

But they also have the potential to damage Earth’s electrical and telecommunications networks, threaten orbiting satellites, and potentially endanger astronauts.

Therefore, solar physicists seek to learn more about the magnetic environment of the sun, and how the solar wind is formed, to improve the accuracy of its occurrence and avoid damage. One of the main goals of the Parker probe was to discover the source of the “slow” solar wind, and how it is being accelerated in the solar corona.

It is known that the solar wind consists of charged particles – mostly protons and helium nuclei – that move very quickly along the magnetic field lines of the sun. Also, these “fast” winds, with speeds ranging between 500 and 1,000 kilometers per second, come from large holes in the solar corona at the north and south poles of the sun.

Unlike previous missions that were devoted to studying the sun, the “Parker” probe is the first probe to approach it to study it closely. Therefore, high hopes were pinned on him to uncover many mysteries that remained unexplained for decades.

The mission is exceptional in many respects. Sending a probe to orbit close to the sun and controlling it presents a major technical challenge. This would not have been possible without taking advantage of a number of advanced technologies that made it possible to protect the probe during its approach to the sun and to run it in the optimal way.

These advanced technologies included a robust and lightweight thermal protection system, water-cooled solar panels, a robust self-control system, and high-precision instrumentation.

NASA named the probe “Parker” after the astrophysicist Egwin Parker, whose work in this field revolutionized scientists’ understanding of the sun.