It's directly exposed to the sunlight and operating at a very high temperature while it's making these measurements it's literally red-hot, with parts of the instrument at more than 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit, and glowing red-orange." "While much of the probe is protected by a heat shield, our cup is one of only two instruments that stick out and have no protection. "The amount of light hitting the Parker Solar Probe determines how hot the spacecraft will get," Case explains.
A scientific paper describing the milestone has been accepted for publication in the Physical Review Letters.ĬfA astrophysicist Anthony Case, the instrument scientist for the Solar Probe Cup, says the instrument itself is an incredible feat of engineering. "That's the region we've flown into - an area where the plasma, atmosphere and wind are magnetically stuck and interacting with the Sun."Īccording to data collected by the cup, the spacecraft entered the corona three times on April 28, at one point for up to five hours.
#Sun corona free
"If you look at close-up pictures of the Sun, sometimes you'll see these bright loops or hairs that seem to break free from the Sun but then reconnect with it," Stevens explains. Prior to April 28, the spacecraft had been flying just beyond this point. The Alfvén point is when solar winds exceed a critical speed and can break free of the corona and the Sun's magnetic fields. The corona is the outermost layer of the Sun's atmosphere where strong magnetic fields bind plasma and prevent turbulent solar winds from escape. So, a basic part of this mission is to be able to measure whether or not we crossed this critical point." "The only way to do that is for the spacecraft to cross the outer boundary, which scientists call the Alfvén point. We can accomplish this by flying into the solar atmosphere," says Michael Stevens, an astrophysicist at the CfA who helps monitor the cup. "The goal of this entire mission is to learn how the Sun works. The cup collects particles from the Sun's atmosphere that helped scientists verify that the spacecraft had indeed crossed into the corona.
The historic moment was achieved thanks to a large collaboration of scientists and engineers, including members of the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) who built and monitor a key instrument onboard the probe: the Solar Probe Cup. On April 28, the Parker Solar Probe successfully entered the corona of the Sun - an extreme environment that’s roughly 2 million degrees Fahrenheit. Cambridge, MA - A spacecraft launched by NASA has done what was once thought impossible.
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