People touched the sun!
Yes, history is made. It is the first time that a man-made spacecraft has reached the Sun’s atmosphere (Corona). NASA reported on December 14 that after a long wait. Its Parker Solar Probe had entered the unknown region of the solar system on April 26 this year. No spacecraft has ever come so close to the sun in the history of human civilization.
NASA’s head of heliophysics Nicola Fox announced the accomplishment at a news conference. In a word, he added, “We’ve finally arrived”. This achievement is expected to provide answers to some of the most pressing concerns regarding the sun. It is yet unknown that how solar wind is generated from the sun.
The Parker Solar Probe entered the Sun’s atmosphere at 9:33 a.m. Universal Time on April 26 of this year. The goal was to traverse the Alfvén surface, which is a type of boundary. It took several months for scientists to determine that the spacecraft had crossed that long-awaited threshold. In a 1942 research report published in the Nectar magazine, Swedish physicist Hannes Alfvén first mentioned the limit. Since then, scientists have been looking for this surface.
Parker Solar Probe, built at a cost of 1.5 billion US dollars. In 2018 it started circling the sun It has gradually moved closer to the solar surface with each circumnavigation. According to NASA scientists, the spacecraft crossed the Alfwen border on April 26 when it entered the spacecraft at a distance of 14 million kilometers, or barely 20 solar radius from the sun’s surface. Previously, some experts predicted that this barrier would be “unclear”.
NASA scientists said that the border is fairly distinct and wrinkled and this information is based on the Parker Solar Probe’s received data. This is because the spacecraft crossed this border and spent around five hours in the Corona area. Then I went out once more. Parker briefly crossed the Alfwen border two more times. As the solar wind hit the corona, its speed and plasma concentration both reduced dramatically. The Parker probe passed through an electrically charged “pseudo wave”, whose inner state was more tranquil than their surroundings. The spacecraft also analyzed the peculiar variations of the solar wind’s magnetic field, or switchback, when inside the corona.
A carbon-composite heat shield protects the spacecraft’s instruments from the sun’s intense heat. This heat shield can withstand temperatures up to 1,360 degrees Celsius. The Parker Solar Probe aims to orbit the Sun at least 24 times. It crossed the Alfven surface during its eighth orbit. It circled for the ninth time in November. At that time it may have crossed that border again. The data sent during that orbit has not yet been fully downloaded and analyzed.
