At the closest orbital point to the sun, the temperature at the front of the Parker Solar Probe will likely reach 1,400 degrees Celsius.
Parker Solar Probe program infographic. Dock. NASA
JAKARTA – NASA is targeting its Parker Solar Probe spacecraft to pass the Sun at the closest distance ever achieved before around December 24, 2024.
If this target can be achieved according to plan, it will be a monumental achievement in the world of space. Equivalent to the Moon landing in 1969.
“This will be a monumental achievement for all of humanity. This is equivalent to landing on the Moon in 1969,” said Johns Hopkins University Astrophysicist who is also a Scientist on the Parker Solar Probe mission project, Dr. Nour E. Raouafi to the BBC.
Flying on a “touch the sun” mission, the Parker Solar Probe spacecraft was first launched on August 12 2018. With the main mission of obtaining information to help humans gain a deeper understanding of the Sun, this unmanned aircraft is targeted to be within a distance of only 6 .1 million km, or 3.8 million miles from the “surface” of the Sun.
If you look at the history of previous Sun observation missions, the closest that could be achieved was only around 43.432 million kilometers or 27 million miles. It was carried out by NASA’s Helios-B spacecraft on April 17, 1976.
Apart from the distance, the Parker Solar Probe spacecraft is also reported to be able to set a speed record, reaching 435,000 mph (miles/hour). This speed also far surpassed the Helios-B, which at that time could only reach 252,792 km/hour (157,078 mph).
As an illustration, the speed that the Parker Solar Probe can achieve will be equivalent to flying from New York to London in less than 30 seconds. This speed can be achieved because it is supported by the large gravitational pull of the Sun.
Even though since 2018, the Parker Solar Probe spacecraft has passed the Sun repeatedly, with increasingly closer distances, the target in 2024 is clearly a mission full of challenges.
One of the main challenges is the temperature of the Sun, which will be very hot. Where at perihelion or the closest orbital point to the sun, the temperature at the front of the Parker Solar Probe will likely reach 1,400 degrees Celsius.
With the challenges faced, NASA scientists hope that this mission to approach the Sun can provide an important breakthrough in knowledge about a number of processes that occur in the solar system. As the most important thing is a clearer explanation of how the corona, the outer atmosphere of the Sun, works.
In addition, it is hoped that the measurements and images that Parker Solar Probe will obtain will help scientists learn more about the origin of the solar wind and how it evolved. This will make an important contribution to efforts to predict changes in the space environment that affect life and technology on Earth.
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2024-01-02 03:30:47
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