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Credit: NASA/JOHNS HOPKINS PP/Naval Research Lab
NASA’s Parker Solar probe is not a stranger to breaking records.
2024. December 24th Parker made a story by flying closer to the sun than any spacecraft in history. The probe reached just 3.8 million miles (6.1 million kilometers) from the sun’s surface, entering the outer layer of the sun atmosphere known as the corona. During this Flyby, he also reached the highest speed of 430,000 miles per hour (690,000 kilometers per hour) without giving his record as the fastest person created by a person of all time.
Now NASA has released an extraordinary video captured during the historic Flyby, offering the nearest Sun images ever recorded. The new images were captured using a Parker’s wide outdoor image for the sun, or WISPR, revealing an unprecedented view of the sun’s coron and the sun’s winds, shortly after they run out of the coron.
Still from a video made of NASA’s Parker Solar probe, the next Sun someday, ever in 2024. December 24th | Credit: NASA/JOHNS HOPKINS PP/Naval Research Lab
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“The Parker Solar probe has once again taken us to the dynamic atmosphere of our nearest star,” said NICKY FOX, an associate administrator at NASA headquarters in Washington, attached to the images. ” These new data will help us significantly improve our weather forecasts to ensure the safety of our astronauts and the protection of our technology here on Earth and throughout the solar system. “
Wispro images have revealed an important boundary of the sun atmosphere called the Heliosperinic current sheet, where the magnetic field of the sun changes the direction from north to south. It also captured high resolution for the first time, collisions between the mass of several coronary masses (CME), which are the main cosmic weather engines and are important to understand the risk for astronauts and technologies on Earth, such as electricity networks and communications satellites.
“In these images, we see that CME is essentially accumulated on top of each other,” said Angela Vourlid, a scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, WISPP instrument, who designed, built and owns a spaceship in Laurera, Maryland. “We use this to find out how CME merge.”
Before the Parker Solar probe NASA and its international partners were able to study solar wind only from afar, so the spacecraft helped fill the main gaps in the knowledge. This found that the “switching” of “switching” -Zig-zagring magnetic field models-14.7 million miles from the sun and linked them to one of the two main types of solar wind types.
Closer to just 8 million miles, the parker learned that the boundary of the Sun’s corona is much more uneven and more complex than he thought before.
But more remained to be discovered.
NASA’s Parker Solar probe, launched in 2018. August 12, to study the sun in the mission. | Credit: NASA/JOHNS HOPKINS PP/Steve Gribben
“The big unknown was: How is the Sun Wind Created, and how can he avoid the great gravity of the sun?” said Nour Rawafi, a Parker Solar probe project scientist Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. “Understanding this constant particle flow, especially the slow wind of the sun, is a big challenge, especially given the variety of features of these streams, but with the Parker Sun Probe features we will be closer than ever to reveal their origin and how they develop.”
Before the Parker’s sun probe, long -distance observations indicate that there are actually two varieties of slow solar wind, distinguished by the orientation or variability of their magnetic fields. One type of slow solar wind called Alfvénic has a small -scale switch. The second type, called non -Alfvénic, does not show these changes in its magnetic field.
The Parker Sun Probe, when it was closer to the sun, confirmed that there is actually two types of sun wind. Her images from close range help scientists distinguish between the origin of two types, which, the scientists who think, are unique. Non-alfvénial wind can occur in properties called helmet flows-diddle loops that connect active regions where some particles can heat up enough to escape-that at a time, Alfvénic Wind may occur near coronary holes or dark cool corona regions.
“We have no final consensus yet, but we have a lot of new intriguing data,” said NASA, a scientist of the Parker Solar Zondo Mission, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said.
The United alliance, Delta IV Heavy Rocket, releases NASA’s Parker Solar probe in 2018. August 12 From the Canaver Cape Canaler at the Air Force Station in Florida. | Credit: Bill Ingals/NASA
The Parker Sun Probe is built to endure extreme conditions – from deep space cold to intense heat near the sun. The main factor in his survival is the difference between temperature and heat. Although the space at the sun can reach a temperature of several million degrees, it does not necessarily mean that heat is high. This is because the corona of the sun is extremely thin, which means that there are fewer particles. Although individual particles in the coron are extremely hot, there are not many. So the probe does not get a lot of heat.
“While the Parker sun probe will travel through a space with a temperature of several million degrees, surface surface [its] The heat shield, directed to the sun, will only be heated to about 2500 degrees Fahrenheit (about 1,400 degrees Celsius), ”NASA writes.
This temperature is, of course, still incredibly hot, making its heat shield a necessary heat protection system (TPS). The shield is made of carbon composite foam beaten between two carbon plates. Carbon is ideal for this purpose because it is both easy and can withstand extremely high temperatures without melting.
“Tested up to 3000 degrees Fahrenheit (1,650 degrees Celsius), TPS can control any heat that the sun can send to make almost all devices safe,” NASA explained.
Its structure allows you to endure intense heat while reducing weight, making it extremely important for a spacecraft that needs to be driven at high speed. The outer TPS surface is also covered with white ceramic paint, which helps to reflect as much solar energy as possible and further reduces the amount of heat.