“The amount of light hitting the Parker Solar Probe determines how hot the spacecraft will get,” Case said. 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, said 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 April 28, at one point for up to five hours.
SUN CORONA WHITE 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 said.
Before 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. “The goal of this entire mission is to learn how the sun works,” said Michael Stevens, an astrophysicist at the CfA who helps monitor the cup. 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, 2021, the Parker Solar Probe successfully entered the corona of the sun-an extreme environment that is roughly 2 million degrees Fahrenheit. Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, African ArtĪ spacecraft launched by NASA has done what was once thought impossible.
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