For the first time ever, the US probe Parker has 'touched' the Sun. It flew through the Sun's upper atmosphere, the corona. It was announced on Tuesday, December 14, on NASA's website.
"Touching the Sun with the Parker Solar Probe is a significant moment for the study of the Sun and a truly remarkable achievement," said NASA Deputy Director for Science Thomas Zurbuchen.
According to the space agency, the unit measured the magnetic fields and particle samples in the solar corona, where temperatures can reach 500 thousand kelvin (about 500 thousand degrees Celsius) and even several million kelvin.
According to experts NASA, data transmitted by Parker, will be of great scientific value for the study "of the causes of heating of the solar corona", as well as to prepare for manned missions, since it will predict "the radiation environment in which to work and live the future conquerors of space.
The probe was launched in August 2018 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. At the end of October of the same year, it broke the record for closest approach to the Sun set by the German-American Helios 2 spacecraft. The equipment on board is protected by a 11.43-cm-thick carbon-fibre-reinforced plastic casing that can withstand temperatures of up to 1,400 degrees Celsius. On November 8, the Parker Solar Probe transmitted its first signal to Earth, which indicated that the device was in excellent condition and that all systems and instruments were working without problems. It is noted that on November 5, the probe accelerated to 343 thousand km / h, which is a record speed for the spacecraft.
In January last year, U.S. astronomers made the most detailed photographs of the surface of the Sun for all the time of observations over him. The pictures, taken by the U.S. telescope DKIST, will help decipher data from the Parker Solar Probe, astronomers say. The images show boiling plasma covering the surface of the star.
