IDXChannel – Spacecraft owned by NASA, the Parker Solar Probe, has set two new records during its 10th flight from the Sun.
Citing the Daily Mail, Wednesday (1/12/2021), the space rover is in the closest distance, which is about 5.3 million miles or 8.5 million kilometers from the Sun.
Not only that, on the flight on November 21, the Parker Solar Probe also broke another record as the fastest object that shot up to 586,864 kilometers per hour.
In comparison, at that speed it can reach Earth to the Moon in less than an hour, a journey that normally takes about three days.
During this trip, the probe also detected a higher-than-expected amount of dust near the Sun, according to Nour Raouafi, Parker Solar Probe project scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.
“What’s interesting about this is that it greatly improves our understanding of the deepest regions of our heliosphere, giving us insight into an environment that was hitherto a mystery,” he explained.
While the Parker Solar Probe does not carry a dust detector, when dust grains hit the spacecraft, a plasma cloud is created.
This cloud generates a unique electrical charge that is captured by multiple sensors on the FIELDS probe, which is designed to measure electric and magnetic fields near the Sun.
Dust can pose a potential hazard to this celestial body, although it has several features to help it withstand damage.
Jim Kinnison, Parker Solar Probe mission systems engineer explained that they designed materials and components that withstand the impact of high-velocity dust and the effects of the smaller particles created in this impact. (NDA)
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