Since 2021, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has been traveling very close to the Sun to capture unprecedented data on our star.
In fact, the record-breaking spacecraft completed its closest approach to the flaming plasma ball in June, 5.3 million miles (8.3 million km) from the sun’s surface. To achieve this extraordinary feat, Parker had a little help from his friends. Well, one friend: Venus.
NASA He said Parker was on course for a sixth-closest flyby to Venus on Aug. 21, thanks to some careful maneuvering on Aug. 3. The aim is for the probe to use the yellow planet’s gravity to tighten its orbit around it. The sun – Parker’s technique He was hired repeatedly during its mission, which began with its launch on August 12, 2018. If the approach to Venus goes well, Parker will be within about 4.5 million miles (7.2 million km) of the sun’s surface on September 27.
But the story won’t end there.
NASA has another flyby planned for Venus after this one, designed to take Parker within 3.9 million miles (6.2 million kilometers) of the sun. For context, Earth is 93 million miles (149 million kilometers) from the bright yellow ball. So, Parker is going to be very, very close.
Related: NASA’s Parker Solar Probe kicks off its summer with Sunstroke 16
To get into some technical details, Parker’s final maneuver consisted of the spacecraft firing a small boost for 4.5 seconds to adjust its course for 77 miles (124 kilometers) and increasing its speed for 1.4 seconds as it headed towards Venus. This shift is actually quite subtle because the probe is traveling at hundreds of thousands of miles per hour as it flies through the inner solar system.
During the sun’s upcoming September approach, for example, the team says Parker will be traveling at 394.742 mph (635.276 km/h) – a new speed record for the probe and the spacecraft as a whole. Then closest approach At launch, Parker is estimated to hurtle through space at about 430,000 miles per hour (700,000 kilometers per hour) — a speed that NASA says will be fast enough to transport you from Philadelphia to Washington, DC. One second.
“Parker’s speed is about 8.7 miles per second, so in terms of changing the spacecraft’s speed and course, this course correction maneuver might seem insignificant,” said Yanping Guo, director of mission design and navigation at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland. . he said in a statement. “However, the maneuver was critical to obtaining the desired gravitational support on Venus, which would dramatically change Parker’s speed and distance to the Sun.”
since l launched In 2018, Parker has been dubbed the ride that “touches the sun”. And that’s what I did. in 2021, it finally flies out through the upper atmosphere of our star, also known as the corona, which officially means it actually “touches the sun”.
With Parker’s data, scientists hope to answer many of the big questions about our star, such as why the corona is hotter than the surface — a strange mystery indeed — and decipher the entrance and exit of the stream of charged particles known as the solar wind. And this is just the beginning. In the end, it will probably solve some unknown mysteries that we have to think about.
After all, it was only recently that scientists discovered that the sun emits the highest energy radiation ever recorded, suggesting we may not have found this star yet.
2023-08-11 18:29:52
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