(light music)
- Hi, I'm Ellen Stofan,
the John and Adrienne Mars Director
of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.
I'm Doctor E and we're here for another episode
of E.Z. Science.
- Hey, and I'm Thomas Zurbuchen,
the Associate Administrator for Science
at NASA also known as Doctor Z.
- We're here today to talk a little bit about something
that people don't probably think of as being
that important in their lives
but if for example you use some app
to help you get to where you were going today,
you're actually relying on NASA understanding the sun.
- So we're looking at our star, our favorite star,
the sun and we see that the star is a magnetic star.
You see as the sun is boiling at the surface
because it's so hot it's carrying with it magnetic fields.
And like little arcs they're there
and they're interacting with each other liberating energy,
UV energy of the type that of course burns your skin,
an x-ray like you see at the doctor.
That kind of radiation is coming from the sun
and it's spreading around causing
what we call space weather.
Of course, as it's heating up, that atmosphere, the corona,
it's also blowing away it's atmosphere.
It cannot hold on to it and it's filling the space
between the planets.
- Now that space weather
is what can disrupt our communication satellites,
our GPS satellites.
For the astronauts up on the space station,
they even have to worry about what's going on
on the surface of the sun.
- Exactly right and when they're leaving
to go to the moon or to Mars,
that is even more important
because now we're away
from the magnetic protection of our Earth.
- Now NASA has a lot of spacecrafts studying the sun,
and they get as close to the sun as they can,
but right now we have a spacecraft up there
that's doing something pretty special.
Can you tell us about the Parker Solar Probe?
- It's really the first spacecraft to touch the sun,
to fly through that corona, through that atmosphere,
and sample it in a way that we've never seen.
So in fact it just completed its third orbit
by the sun and it's collecting data
and sending it back to Earth.
So we're learning about this atmosphere
in a way we've never seen before just now.
- I think a lot of people don't recognize
that when NASA does things like go to a planet
or get really close to the sun,
we have to push technology in ways
that you just don't normally have to do
which then spins off and benefits us right here on Earth.
- Absolutely.
A lot of these materials that are being developed
right here for Parker Solar Probe and we're developed
in the last decade or so are materials
that are very much applicable in other systems
like energy systems
or even fire fighting type of applications
where those kind of materials matter for example.
- Now we did get a question that someone sent in
to E.Z. Science, so don't forget
about sending your questions in for future episodes.
Parker has gathered some information
about why the sun's corona is hotter than its surface.
Tell us a bit about what it's found in its first year.
- What we're learning about is that the near corona
like right down there by the sun
is a lot more turbulent, a lot more interactive
than we thought before.
- This is a spacecraft
that was named for a living scientist
and can you tell us why we did that?
- Eugene Parker is so important for that entire field.
He's the guy who predicted that the solar atmosphere
would be blown off into super sonic stream,
the solar wind.
Highly controversial and of course he was right.
In fact, there is something like 35 spacecraft
in all of NASA's inventory that are dealing with things
that Parker predicted and I will never forget
how Parker looked and his family
when the rocket went into the sky with him
seeing his spacecraft leave the Earth.
I'm going to ask you the second question
that is how does the research in space help prepare humans
on a journey to future Artemis missions
to the moon, Mars, and beyond?
- So the more that we can monitor the sun,
the more that we can understand
and predict what's happening at the sun,
the better we can do with protecting the astronauts.
Now if we know there's a solar flares
of particles coming towards them, they can go into areas
that are shielded.
And those are some of the technologies we work on
is how do we protect astronauts from this space radiation
both from the sun but also from galactic cosmic rays.
We're gonna be able to do that research
even better on the surface of the moon
outside of our magnetic field
where as Thomas said the astronauts
are much more vulnerable.
Now Thomas, some of the surface science from Artemis
is also gonna help us eventually get to Mars.
- Of course.
As we're sampling the surface of the moon,
what we also will be able to do
is look at the components that are in there,
especially water, that we may be able to use
both on the moon and Mars over time
to live off but also make fuel out of it.
So it's really exciting.
- Well I'm afraid we're out of time
and thank you, this has been incredibly fun
to talk about our favorite star.
- And I really want to encourage everybody
to send questions again,
questions that we'll answer
on the next episode of E.Z. Science.
(light music)