NASA scientists began planning the project five years ago. The challenge is described as enormous for the Parker Solar Probe, as this space probe will come as close to the Sun as any human object ever has.
Within a year, on December 24, 2024, Parker Solar Probe hopes to accomplish the mission of “touching the sun” at its record speed of 195 kilometers per second. The Parker Solar Probe has previously made successful attempts to get close to the Sun, but now the spacecraft will come closer than ever before.
To understand how quickly the vehicle can get there, you can imagine flying from New York to London in less than 30 seconds.
No other human-made object has ever moved so fast or been so close to the Sun before – just 6.1 million kilometers from the Sun's 'surface'.
– This will be a tremendous achievement for all of humanity. This coincides with the landing on the moon in 1969, as project researcher Dr. Nour Rawafi told the BBC.
Want to understand “space weather”
Since the spacecraft will be exposed to a maximum temperature of 1,400 degrees during its journey, NASA's plan is to quickly approach perihelion, the point in the spacecraft's orbit closest to the sun, to make measurements and quickly exit again.
With the help of the project, NASA wants to make measurements of the solar environment that it hopes will provide groundbreaking knowledge about important solar processes. Primarily, the project seeks to learn how the Sun's outer atmosphere works.
By better understanding how the Sun's outer atmosphere works, scientists can improve their predictions of the Sun's behavior and “space weather” phenomena.
Understanding “space weather” also has implications for life on Earth, as powerful blasts of particles and magnetic fields from the Sun during “space weather” can disrupt electricity grids, the BBC reports.
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