NASA’s Solar Probe Set for Historic Close Encounter with the Sun!

The groundbreaking Parker Solar Probe by NASA is set to make its closest approach to the sun ever on Christmas Eve, achieving a record of 3.8 million miles (6.2 million kilometers) from the surface.

Initiated in August 2018, the spacecraft is engaged in a seven-year mission to enhance scientific insights about our star and assist in forecasting space-weather phenomena that may impact life on Earth.

This closest approach will occur on Tuesday, December 24, at 6:53 am (11:53 GMT).

If the gap between the Earth and the sun represented the length of an American football field, the spacecraft would be positioned merely four yards (meters) from the end zone at that time.

“This exemplifies NASA’s audacious missions, undertaking ventures that no one else has achieved previously to resolve time-honored questions regarding our universe,” stated Arik Posner, program scientist for the Parker Solar Probe, in a statement.

“We eagerly await the initial status update from the spacecraft and anticipate receiving the scientific data in the upcoming weeks.”

During this closest approach—termed perihelion—mission teams will lose direct communication with Parker, depending on a “beacon tone” this Friday to verify the status of the spacecraft.

Despite the heat shield enduring extreme temperatures around 1,600 to 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit (870 to 930 degrees Celsius), the probe’s internal devices will remain at near-room temperature—approximately 85F (29C)—while it investigates the sun’s outer atmosphere known as the corona.

Along with the extreme temperatures, Parker will be traveling at a remarkable speed of approximately 430,000 mph (690,000 kph), which is fast enough to traverse from Washington, D.C., to Tokyo in under a minute.

“No human-engineered object has ever approached a star this closely, so Parker will genuinely be sending back data from uncharted regions,” remarked Nick Pinkine, mission operations manager for the Parker Solar Probe at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland.

“We are thrilled to hear back from the spacecraft as it swings back around the sun.”

By embarking into these extreme conditions, Parker has been aiding scientists in addressing some of the sun’s greatest enigmas: the origin of the solar wind, the reason the corona is hotter than the surface below, and the formation of coronal mass ejections—huge clouds of plasma that burst through space.

This Christmas Eve flyby marks the first of three record-setting close encounters, with the subsequent two—scheduled for March 22, 2025, and June 19, 2025—also anticipated to bring Parker Solar Probe to a similarly close proximity to the sun.

© 2024 AFP