BackNasa to launch Parker Solar Probe into Sun’s atmosphere in 2018
Nasa says the Parker Solar Probe will measure plasma waves, high energy particles, and carry a white light imager to capture images of the structures through which it is flying
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Miami: A new Nasa mission aims to brush by the sun, coming closer than any spacecraft in history to its scorching heat and radiation in order to reveal how stars are made, the US space agency said Wednesday.
After liftoff from Kennedy Space Center in Florida in July 2018, the Parker Solar Probe will become the first to fly directly into the sun’s atmosphere, known as the corona.
The plan for the unmanned spacecraft is to orbit within 3.9 million miles (6.3 million kilometers) of the sun’s surface.
Temperatures in that region exceed 2,500 Fahrenheit (1,377 Celsius), for which the spacecraft is equipped with a 4.5-inch-thick (11.43 cm) carbon-composite shield.
The spacecraft will measure plasma waves and high energy particles, and carry a white light imager to capture images of the structures through which it is flying, according to Nicola Fox, mission project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.
“We will brush closely by it," she said at an event in Chicago to unveil the mission, which Nasa has touted as promising to provide humanity’s closest-ever observations of a star.
“You can learn so much from looking out the window," Fox said. “You can see the sun is shining, you can see the birds are singing. But until you actually go out, you have no idea quite how hot it is out there or how windy it is, or what the conditions are like."
“I think we have really come as far as we can with looking at things and now it is time to go up and pay it a visit," she added.
Initially called Solar Probe Plus, the mission was renamed after the astrophysicist Eugene Parker, 89, a professor emeritus at the University of Chicago.
A 20-day launch window for the spacecraft’s liftoff atop a Delta IV Heavy rocket opens 31 July 2018.
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