NASA has announced their mission to the Sun to begin the summer of 2018. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe with nearly 5 inch coat of carbon composite solar shields will explore the sun.
This will obviously be an unmanned mission with a 10 foot high probe. The probe will be sent closer to the sun than any spacecraft has ever been.
Researchers have explained that this mission will address questions that haven’t been answered before. Understanding more about the sun will help shed some light on Earth and also give more information on Earth’s place in the solar system.
The Parker Solar Probe will explore not just the sun but the outermost atmosphere, the Corona. This will be the first mission NASA has arranged to the sun.
The spacecraft was initially called Solar Probe Plus but on Wednesday NASA renamed it Parker Solar Probe. It was named in honour of astrophysicist Eugene Parker.
Eugene Parker was the first to predict the existence of solar wind in a paper he published in 1958. He was a young professor at Chicago’s Enrico Fermi Institute when he wrote the paper. Parker’s paper was rejected at the time as scientists believed the space between planets was a vacuum. Although, it was rejected Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Parker’s colleague saved his paper.
About two years after Parker managed to publish his paper again, his theory of solar wind was examined and confirmed by satellite observations. Parker’s observation revolutionized the world’s understanding of the interplanetary space and the Sun.
Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator for the Agency’s Science Mission Directorate, in Washington said, “This is the first time NASA has named a spacecraft for a living individual. It’s a testament to the importance of his body of work, founding a new field of science that also inspired my own research and many important science questions NASA continues to study and further understand every day. I’m very excited to be personally involved honouring a great man and his unprecedented legacy.”
The probe will carry Parker’s paper on solar wind along with a chip with photos of him. It will also carry a plate with an inscription that Parker wishes, a message to the Sun.
Parker said, “I’m greatly honoured to be associated with such a heroic scientific space mission.”
The spacecraft will have to withstand temperatures as high as 1400 Degree Celsius but the design of the probe is such that the inside of it will remain at room temperature. NASA has reported that the mission has been scheduled to end in June 2025.
Parker was reported saying, “The solar probe is going to a region of space that has never been explored before It’s very exciting that we’ll finally get a look. One would like to have some more detailed measurements of what’s going on in the solar wind. I’m sure that there will be some surprises. There always are.”
