For the First Time Ever, NASA's Parker Solar Probe Has Entered the Sun
It has now been revealed, this past Tuesday, that for the first time in the history of science, a spacecraft has managed to reach the Sun’s surface. On December 14, scientists announced that NASA’s aircraft Parker Solar Probe flew into Sun’s upper atmosphere earlier this year in April. “Parker Solar Probe ‘touching the sun’ is a monumental moment for solar science and a truly remarkable feat,” Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for NASA says.
NASA has finally taken a big leap in a mission which they dreamed to accomplish 60 years ago when they were first formed in 1958. In 2018, NASA spent $1.6 billion to build Parker Solar Probe, in hopes to gather more information on the glowing giant, Sun. Since then the craft has been present around the Sun but never flew this close until April. Nicolas Fox, a director at NASA’s heliophysics division says, “For centuries, humanity has only been able to observe this atmosphere from afar, … we have finally arrived. Humanity has touched the sun”.
The findings were announced in New Orleans at the 2021 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting. Further findings have been published in Physics Review Letters. However, it took time for the scientists to reveal the milestone once they were able to confirm the readings and data collected. On 28 April this year, the probe crossed the Alfven Critical Surface and stayed for approximately 5 hours on the surface which is calculated to be 8.1 million miles from the center of the Sun. Alfven Critical Surface is the point where Sun’s solar atmosphere and solar winds on the Sun meets.
It is not a smooth boundary but an uneven one. “The goal of this entire mission is to learn how the Sun works. We can accomplish this by flying into the solar atmosphere,… the only way to do that is for the spacecraft to cross the outer boundary, which scientists call the Alfvén point.” Says Michael Stevens, a CfA astrophysicist. The solar wind is the emissions of charged particles that are released from the Sun that reaches Earth.
One of the other things, the probe has been successful in accomplishing is to find where switchbacks, a common structure present in the solar winds are actually coming from. Although scientists are yet to know more about them, the switchbacks are the zig-zag structure that causes magnetic field irregularities which scientists now possibly think might be coming from Sun’s surface, the photosphere. Solar winds are emissions of charged particles that may contain electrons, protons and other metal ions that are released as the Sun’s gravity cannot hold their energy and speed anymore. More knowledge on solar winds will help understand why the solar atmosphere is quite hotter than the surface of the Sun.
However, with every passing day, scientists are coming across more information related to the physics behind Sun. This will help us understand the glowing star in more depth and how the phenomena happening on the Sun could affect our planet Earth in the possible future and make us be precautious from any unfortunate events.
The Parker Solar Probe is set to be around Sun for a few more years and will attempt on reaching the surface of the Sun again. It is aiming to go closer 24 more times in the next 4 years and will try to reach as close as 4 million miles from the center of the Sun.
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