Solarwind - Blog Posts

Meet Parker Solar Probe, Our Mission to Touch the Sun

In just a few weeks, we're launching a spacecraft to get closer to the Sun than any human-made object has ever gone.

The mission, called Parker Solar Probe, is outfitted with a lineup of instruments to measure the Sun's particles, magnetic and electric fields, solar wind and more – all to help us better understand our star, and, by extension, stars everywhere in the universe.

Parker Solar Probe is about the size of a small car, and after launch – scheduled for no earlier than Aug. 6, 2018 – it will swing by Venus on its way to the Sun, using a maneuver called a gravity assist to draw its orbit closer to our star. Just three months after launch, Parker Solar Probe will make its first close approach to the Sun – the first of 24 throughout its seven-year mission.

Though Parker Solar Probe will get closer and closer to the Sun with each orbit, the first approach will already place the spacecraft as the closest-ever human-made object to the Sun, swinging by at 15 million miles from its surface. This distance places it well within the corona, a region of the Sun's outer atmosphere that scientists think holds clues to some of the Sun's fundamental physics.

For comparison, Mercury orbits at about 36 million miles from the Sun, and the previous record holder – Helios 2, in 1976 – came within 27 million miles of the solar surface. 

Humanity has studied the Sun for thousands of years, and our modern understanding of the Sun was revolutionized some 60 years ago with the start of the Space Age. We've come to understand that the Sun affects Earth in more ways than just providing heat and light – it's an active and dynamic star that releases solar storms that influence Earth and other worlds throughout the solar system. The Sun's activity can trigger the aurora, cause satellite and communications disruptions, and even – in extreme cases – lead to power outages.

Much of the Sun's influence on us is embedded in the solar wind, the Sun's constant outflow of magnetized material that can interact with Earth's magnetic field. One of the earliest papers theorizing the solar wind was written by Dr. Gene Parker, after whom the mission is named.

Though we understand the Sun better than we ever have before, there are still big questions left to be answered, and that's where scientists hope Parker Solar Probe will help.  

First, there's the coronal heating problem. This refers to the counterintuitive truth that the Sun's atmosphere – the corona – is much, much hotter than its surface, even though the surface is millions of miles closer to the Sun's energy source at its core. Scientists hope Parker Solar Probe's in situ and remote measurements will help uncover the mechanism that carries so much energy up into the upper atmosphere.

Second, scientists hope to better understand the solar wind. At some point on its journey from the Sun out into space, the solar wind is accelerated to supersonic speeds and heated to extraordinary temperatures. Right now, we measure solar wind primarily with a group of satellites clustered around Lagrange point 1, a spot in space between the Sun and Earth some 1 million miles from us. 

By the time the solar wind reaches these satellites, it has traveled about 92 million miles already, blending together the signatures that could shed light on the acceleration process. Parker Solar Probe, on the other hand, will make similar measurements less than 4 million miles from the solar surface – much closer to the solar wind's origin point and the regions of interest.

Scientists also hope that Parker Solar Probe will uncover the mechanisms at work behind the acceleration of solar energetic particles, which can reach speeds more than half as fast as the speed of light as they rocket away from the Sun! Such particles can interfere with satellite electronics, especially for satellites outside of Earth's magnetic field.

Parker Solar Probe will launch from Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, adjacent to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Because of the enormous speed required to achieve its solar orbit, the spacecraft will launch on a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy, one of the most powerful rockets in the world.

Stay tuned over the next few weeks to learn more about Parker Solar Probe's science and follow along with its journey to launch. We'll be posting updates here on Tumblr, on Twitter and Facebook, and at nasa.gov/solarprobe.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com

The Daredevil Spacecraft That Will Touch the Sun

In the summer of 2018, we’re launching Parker Solar Probe, a spacecraft that will get closer to the Sun than any other in human history.

Parker Solar Probe will fly directly through the Sun’s atmosphere, called the corona. Getting better measurements of this region is key to understanding our Sun. For instance, the Sun releases a constant outflow of solar material, called the solar wind. We think the corona is where this solar wind is accelerated out into the solar system, and Parker Solar Probe’s measurements should help us pinpoint how that happens.  

The solar wind, along with other changing conditions on the Sun and in space, can affect Earth and are collectively known as space weather. Space weather can trigger auroras, create problems with satellites, cause power outages (in extreme cases), and disrupt our communications signals. That’s because space weather interacts with Earth’s upper atmosphere, where signals like radio and GPS travel from place to place.

Parker Solar Probe is named after pioneering physicist Gene Parker. In the 1950s, Parker proposed a number of concepts about how stars — including our Sun — give off energy. He called this cascade of energy the solar wind. Parker also theorized an explanation for the superheated solar atmosphere, the corona, which is hotter than the surface of the Sun itself.

Getting the answers to our questions about the solar wind and the Sun’s energetic particles is only possible by sending a probe right into the furnace of the Sun’s corona, where the spacecraft can reach 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit. Parker Solar Probe and its four suites of instruments – studying magnetic and electric fields, energetic particles, and the solar wind – will be protected from the Sun’s enormous heat by a 4.5-inch-thick carbon-composite heat shield.

Over the course of its seven-year mission, Parker Solar Probe will make two dozen close approaches to the Sun, continuously breaking its own records and sending back unprecedented science data.

Getting close to the Sun is harder than you might think, since the inertia of a spacecraft launched from Earth will naturally carry it in repeated orbits on roughly the same path. To nudge the orbit closer to the Sun on successive trips, Parker Solar Probe will use Venus’ gravity.

This is a technique called a gravity assist, and it’s been used by Voyager, Cassini, and OSIRIS-REx, among other missions. Though most missions use gravity assists to speed up, Parker Solar Probe is using Venus’ gravity to slow down. This will let the spacecraft fall deeper into the Sun’s gravity and get closer to our star than any other spacecraft in human history.

Get a behind-the-scenes view of the Parker Solar Probe under construction in a clean room on the NASA Sun Science Facebook page.

Keep up with all the latest on Parker Solar Probe at nasa.gov/solarprobe or on Twitter @NASASun.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

Solar System: Things to Know This Week

Mark your calendars for summer 2018: That's when we're launching a spacecraft to touch the sun. 

In honor of our first-ever mission to the heart of the solar system, this week we’re delving into the life and times of this powerful yellow dwarf star.

1. Meet Parker 

Parker Solar Probe, our first mission to go to the sun, is named after Eugene Parker, an American astrophysicist who first theorized that the sun constantly sends out a flow of particles and energy called the solar wind. This historic mission will explore one of the last regions of the solar system to be visited by a spacecraft and help scientists unlock answers to questions they've been pondering for more than five decades.

2. Extra SPF, Please 

Parker Solar Probe will swoop within 4 million miles of the sun's surface, facing heat and radiation like no spacecraft before it. The mission will provide new data on solar activity to help us better understand our home star and its activity - information that can improve forecasts of major space-weather events that could impact life on Earth.

3. Majorly Massive 

The sun is the center of our solar system and makes up 99.8 percent of the mass of the entire solar system. If the sun were as tall as a typical front door, Earth would be about the size of a nickel.

4. Different Spin 

Since the sun is not a solid body, different parts of the sun rotate at different rates. At the equator, the sun spins once about every 25 days, but at its poles the sun rotates once on its axis every 36 Earth days.

5. Can't Stand on It

The sun is a star and a star doesn't have a solid surface. Rather, it's a ball of ionized gas 92.1% hydrogen (H2) and 7.8% helium (He) held together by its own gravity.

6. Center of Attention 

The sun isn't a planet, so it doesn't have any moons. But, the sun is orbited by eight planets, at least five dwarf planets, tens of thousands of asteroids, and hundreds of thousands to trillions of comets and icy bodies.

7. It's Hot in There 

And we mean really, really hot. The temperature at the sun's core is about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit. However, its atmosphere, the corona, can reach temperatures of 3 million degrees. (That's as if it got hotter the farther away you got from a fire, instead of cooler!) Parker Solar Probe will help scientists solve the mystery of why the corona's temperature is so much higher than the surface.

8. Travel Conditions

The sun influences the entire solar system, so studying it helps us better understand the space weather that our astronauts and spacecraft travel through.

9. Life on the Sun? 

Better to admire from afar. Thanks to its hot, energetic mix of gases and plasma, the sun can't be home to living things. However, we can thank the sun for making life on Earth possible by providing the warmth and energy that supply Earth’s food chain.

10. Chance of a Lifetime 

Last but not least, don't forget that the first total solar eclipse to sweep across the U.S. from coast-to-coast since 1918 is happening on August 21, 2017. Our toolkit has you need to know to about it. 

Want to learn more? Read our full list of the 10 things to know this week about the solar system HERE.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com