CNN Indonesia
Tuesday, 19 Sep 2023 18:05 IWST
NASA spacecraft penetrates solar storm. (parkersolarprobe.jhuapl.edu)
Jakarta, CNN Indonesia —
The US Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Parker Solar Probe (NASA) became the first spacecraft to successfully penetrate Sun storm and researching coronal mass ejections (CME).
The spacecraft, which launched in August 2018, was exposed to CME for two solar days at a distance of 9.2 million kilometers from the surface of the Sun.
For comparison, Mercury, which is the closest planet to the Sun, is 37 million kilometers from the Sun. The Earth itself is more than four times that distance, namely around 150 million kilometers.
In a study published in The Astrophysical JournalParker passed through the CME on September 22, 2022, crossing the leading edge of the CME shock wave.
NASA researchers said this moment was the closest CME research to the Sun.
“This is the closest distance to the Sun when we observed a CME. We have never seen an event of this magnitude at this close distance,” said Nour Raouafu, a scientist on the Parker Solar Probe project at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, quoted from Forbes.
During this event, the Parker space probe detected particles traveling at up to 1,350 kilometers per second, which makes it on par with the most powerful solar storm ever observed, the Carrington Event.
CME itself is an ejection of plasma and a large magnetic field from the Sun which is often formed after a solar flare occurs. Both are rooted in the rotation and realignment of the Sun’s magnetic field.
When heading towards Earth, CMEs can cause geomagnetic storms that can change the shape of our planet’s magnetic field, which among other things causes the appearance of auroras.
However, some severe cases of CME can damage satellites, cripple communications systems, and cause massive power outages.
Reported NASAa 2003 study theorized CMEs could interact with interplanetary dust in orbit around our star and even carry the dust outward.
Scientists say further research into how these events interact with interplanetary dust could help scientists better predict how fast CMEs move from the Sun to Earth.
In addition, to estimate when this planet can feel the impact.
(lom/arh)
2023-09-19 11:05:01
#NASA #plane #survive #solar #storm
