The United States space agency NASA is gearing up for its extremely intense mission to touch the Sun. The car-sized spacecraft called the Parker Solar Probe is all set to launch into the sun's fiery red zone, according to NASA.
In the early hours of August 6, A United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy will lift off to space carrying the car-sized spacecraft, Parker Solar Probe (PSP) from the Kennedy Space Center, near Cape Canaveral in Florida. The solar probe will travel closer to the sun than any other spacecraft before.
The solar probe can reveal multiple mysteries behind the sun
According to a report by Space, Nasa’s new probe is designed to investigate the solar weather and it is expected to answer several questions we need answers to. As the sun's atmosphere retains very high temperatures, PSP was designed in such a way that it can tolerate temperatures of around 1,400C (seven times hotter than a kitchen oven).
NASA notes that the sun is our nearest star and is more "complex than it seems to the human eye." It is a dynamic and magnetically active star. A lot of magnetized material and an enormous amount of energy is released out by the sun into our solar system, far beyond the orbit of Pluto.
Named after astrophysicist Eugene Parker, the first living researcher to receive such an honor, the probe will travel in the sun's outer atmosphere, called the corona.
It is difficult to see the corona with a naked eye and it is only visible during a solar eclipse or with a specially designed instrument called a coronograph. So it is very difficult to study the red-hot layer.
As reported by Nasa, The researchers opined that Parker Solar Probe will fly directly through this layer which can answer some mysterious questions like the Sun's constant outflow of magnetized material and the acceleration of the solar wind.
Corona can be studied closely
The sun's surface is around 10,000 F, yet the corona is much hotter. The corona should not be hotter than the surface since it takes its heat from the surface. A number of hypotheses were developed to study why the corona is so hot. Nasa scientists, with this spacecraft, also hope to learn this unanswered puzzle of the corona's enormously high temperatures which spikes up to several million degrees Fahrenheit.
According to Nasa, Parker Solar Probe will use four sets of devices to investigate the star:
- The FIELDS suite for measuring the magnetic and electric fields around the spaceship.
- The WISPR instrument as a Wide-Field Imager for Parker Solar Probe.
- Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons Investigation (SWEAP) to use two parallel instruments to collect the data.
- Finally, the Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun (ISʘIS ) measures particles over a wide range of energies.
