Tthe ancient greeks tell us that icarus flew too close to the sun
and tragically fell to the sea and drowned when the heat melted the wax in his wings
for ages innumerable that story was a determinant for humanity to dare not dream the impossible
for it will only end with us falling greater but has humanity ever listened to any warnings not
only did we just fly too close to the sun we dare to touch it nasa succeeded where icarus couldn't
when the parker solar probe became the first man-made object to touch the sun welcome to
Factnomenal and today let's find out how humanity rewrote history by making contact with a star
On august 12 2018 at 3 31 a.m aboard a delta iv heavy rocket at cape Canaveral
humanity launched its first attempt to touch the sun the parker solar probe
marked the culmination of solar exploration concepts that date back to the late 50s
and nasa realized it for an insignificant price of 1.5 billion dollars parker took its name from Dr
Eugene Parker Dr Parker predicted the existence of the solar wind in 1958 and also coined the freeze
it's been a long time but fortunately Dr Parker is still with us and that makes it the first time
nasa named a spacecraft after a living person dr parker also attended the 2018 launch and that too
obviously was the first time in history for a person to see a space mission named after him
take off reaching the sun required an incredible amount of energy Yen Pinguo from the Johns Hopkins
applied physics laboratory who designed the mission trajectory said in a nasa statement
the launch energy to reach the sun is 55 times that required to get to mars and two times that
needed to get to Pluto Guo also went on to say during summer earth and the other planets
in our solar system are in the most favorable alignment to allow us to get close to the sun
of course the massive amount of gravity wielded by our sun keeps the solar system relatively
in place one might think that getting to the sun is like rolling down a hill
once you begin gravity takes over and does the rest not exactly see our earth is moving at 67
000 miles per hour in orbit and any object leaving the planet begins at that speed almost entirely
sideways parker had to decelerate 53 000 miles per hour to move to the center of our solar system
sounds crazy it gets even wilder as the parker solar probe shed almost 80 percent of its velocity
from the sideways trajectory at launch it was captured by the incredible gravity of the sun
this made the probe the all-time fastest human-made object how fast 364
621 miles per hour at last report to be exact and when parker's closest approach is made in 2024
its speed will reach 430 000 miles per hour that's getting from Philadelphia to Washington dc in one
second or New York City to Tokyo in less than a minute before we get too carried away with this
velocity and its possibilities it amounts to about 0.05 percent of the speed of light
and reaching our nearest cosmic neighbor once we leave the solar system Proxima Centauri
with parker going full throttle we need to pack enough sandwiches for a minimum
of several thousand years but we digress before reaching our sun the parker solar probe completed
the first of seven scheduled flybys of Venus passing through the planet's upper atmosphere
and using its gravity to maneuver the probes orbit to make even closer ventures to the sun
all right not exactly the heart of the sun but picture this if the sun and earth are at opposite
ends of a football field the parker space probe will reach the 4 yard line just outside the sun's
end zone at a breathtakingly close 3.83 million miles this is coming in its closest orbit in 2024
and for further perspective humanity's closest trip to our solar neighbor was with helios ii in
1976 which crossed the orbit of mercury to only 26.987 million miles from the sun or about the
30-yard line what does nasa hope to accomplish by getting the parker solar probe so close to the sun
quite a lot the spacecraft features four instrument suites to explore our sun for its
seven year mission specifically they will study magnetic fields plasma and energy particles and
produce images of the solar wind solar wind was identified decades ago but there's much we do
not understand about it our measurements of solar wind have come near our planet
tens of millions of miles away from its origin and after it's cooled and intermixed
with its amazingly close passes parker will trace how energy and heat move through the solar corona
and what propels them to reach their speeds plus nasa has a great interest in parker learning more
about solar energetic particles or SEPS these are tiny solar projectiles that make the 93 million
trek to earth in under an hour they can torch sensitive electronics on spacecraft and even pose
serious risks to astronauts and parker may answer where they come from SEPS contain a different
mix of particles more of some and fewer of others such as sulfur than other solar expulsions another
large looming question for the parker solar probe is what astronomers call the coronal heating
problem the sun's surface reaches 10 000 degrees Fahrenheit but out in the corona the thermometer
spikes past 2 million degrees Fahrenheit in one of the greatest cosmic riddles for the first time
astrophysicists will take measurements inside the corona itself and look to solve the riddle
the sun lacks a solid surface but does have its own version of one with its photosphere this is
the visible surface of the sun from which comes most of the sunlight that reaches earth directly
there's also the alpha and critical surface this marks the end of the solar atmosphere and
the beginning of the solar wind essentially the sun's gravity and magnetic fields can no longer
keep solar material close and that material leaves the sun never to return that point is alphan being
able to determine exactly where the alpha and critical surface is would clear up estimates
ranging from 4.3 to 8.6 million miles from the sun's so-called surface even before reaching the
sun parker served up a surprise back in 2019 the probe discovered magnetic zigzag structures in the
solar wind dubbed switchbacks which are sudden reverses in the sun's magnetic field during its
recent approach astronomers determined that these originate from the solar surface astronomers hope
to use data from parker to learn how switchbacks are formed and even why the corona is so much
hotter than the solar surface and now that we are there the answers are just around the corner
this announcement by Nicola Fox Heliophysics Division Director of the Science Mission
Directorate at NASA confirmed to the world that parker had indeed dipped into the sun's corona
on April 28 2021 during the spacecraft's eighth close approach to the sun why almost eight months
later the months in between were needed for nasa to get the data back and analyze energy reactions
recorded by parker to be certain it had actually been accomplished now we know that the first touch
came in April with two more in august and November so what exactly happened on April 28th remember
the Alphan critical surface and the varying estimates on its distance from the photosphere
we now know that according to early data parker crossed the critical surface at 8.1 million miles
above the sun's surface parker solar probe crossed the alpha and critical surface at 933 ut and spent
five hours below in direct contact with the sun's plasma the spacecraft dipped below and rose back
above the surface three separate times and in the process discovered the alphin critical surface
was wrinkled spikes and valleys wrinkle the critical surface and scientists want to discover
how these line up with solar activity to determine how this activity affects the atmosphere and more
importantly solar wind parker went even deeper and found a pseudo streamer these bright loop-like
structures that develop over active regions on the sun nasa describes the feed as flying into
the eye of a storm this eerily vivid description matches perfectly with what parker encountered
the solar conditions quieted particles slowed and the number of switchbacks fell as in the eye of a
cosmic hurricane fast forward to august 2021 the most amazing aspect of this historic feat thus far
may be taking the first photos ever from within the sun's corona and then making a spectacular
13 second time lapse video the parker solar probe flew through structures known as coronal streamers
the stunning streaks of light captured from earth in photos of total solar eclipses
even more incredible are the images of our solar system from within the
sun's corona captured by parker's wide field imager of the milky way and multiple planets
including our earth from the sun a mind-blowing feat for humanity which begs the question
it's easy to imagine middle school students all over the planet raising their hands to ask this
most obvious question to their teacher how does it not melt did you say the corona reaches millions
of degrees fahrenheit their teacher and nasa will explain it like this there's a vast difference
between heat and temperature temperature is the measure of how fast particles are moving
while heat is the total amount of energy they transfer as for the corona it is very thin and
has few particles to transfer energy so yes the particles are fast and the temperature is high but
very little energy or heat is actually transferred to the spacecraft nasa describes it as the
difference between putting your hand in a hot oven and putting it in a pot of boiling water neither
are advisable but the comparison works in fact parker's surface is only supposed to reach around
2500 degrees fahrenheit that's all it's plenty and that's why the spacecraft has a heat shield called
the thermal protection system this is a layer of carbon composite foam sandwiched between two
carbon plates the side facing the sun features a white ceramic coating applied as a plasma spray to
deflect heat what does this mean for the delicate scientific instruments aboard parker the sun side
reaches 2500 degrees fahrenheit but the protected instruments maintain a temperature of 85 degrees
fahrenheit and there's also a single gallon one gallon of deionized water to absorb heat
as it passes through the solar arrays and send it back into space from the vehicle's radiator
the next solo flyby for the parker solar probe is in January 2022 and will likely see the spacecraft
enter the corona again and with the sun's regular 11-year cycle of changes in its magnetic field
increasing activity through 2025 the outer edge of the corona will expand
and parker will have greater chances of being inside for longer periods of time
so what do you hope that humanity learns from our first trip to a star
tell us in the comments and as always thank you for watching Factnomenal
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