Jakarta –
A NASA spacecraft has managed to get closer to the sun than any other man-made object has ever done. NASA announced Tuesday that the craft has ‘touched’ the sun’s atmosphere known as the corona.
The plane’s first successful contact with the sun’s outer layer was announced at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union. The plane managed to touch the sun after traveling as far as 150 million kilometers from Earth.
Significant achievements
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe rover crossed the corona for five hours in April. Previously, the Parker Solar Probe had made close contact eight times with the core of the solar system. Then scientists need several months to receive the data and analyze it to confirm the achievements of the plane that launched in 2018.
“The fact that the probe has touched the sun is a pinnacle moment for solar system science and a remarkable achievement,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA’s science mission board, said in a statement.
The Parker Solar Probe has successfully traveled as far as 13 million kilometers from the center of the sun. Parker is said to have crossed the sun’s atmosphere at least three times where temperatures could reach 2 million kelvins (about 1,999,726.85 degrees Celsius), at speeds of 100 kilometers per second.
What can be learned from the sun?
Nour Raouafi, a project scientist at Johns Hopkins University, said the achievement was “very exciting” and explained that the corona appeared dustier than expected. Future solar travel will help scientists better understand the origin of the solar wind, and how it is heated and emitted into space.
Because the sun doesn’t have a solid surface, the corona is a great place to explore a very magnetically strong region, and up close could help scientists better understand solar explosions that could disrupt life on Earth.
Preliminary data suggest the Parker Solar Probe also touched the corona during its ninth approach experiment in August, but scientists say more analysis is needed. Wahana also made its 10th closing approach last month.
The Parker Solar Probe will make its next approach in January 2022. It will continue to approach the sun and dive deeper into the corona until its final orbit in 2025.
NASA delays launch of James Webb
Meanwhile, Nasa announced Wednesday that it would delay the launch of its newest space telescope, the James Webb, by at least two days. The delay was due to a communication problem between the observatory and the carrier rocket.
The launch of James Webb is targeted to be carried out on December 24. The US$10 billion (Rp140 trillion) telescope will be placed on top of Europe’s Ariane 5 rocket and launched from French Guiana, South America. The James Webb telescope is predicted to be able to see farther into space than its predecessor the Hubble telescope.
rap/ha (AP, dpa)
Also watch the video: Asteroids Bigger Than the Eiffel Tower Heading into Earth Orbit
(ita / ita)
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