Page 30 - All About Space 68 - 2017 UK

Mission to touch the Sun
Mission to touch the Sun

The Parker Solar Probe

Slated for launch next year, the Parker Solar Probe will
be the first to get close to our nearest star Solar array cooling system
Solar arrays are protected from
incineration with a cooling system
Primary science will take roughly 11 days as the spacecraft moves around our
nearest star.
Closest approach to the Sun is
between 35 and 9.5 times the
radius of the Sun.

Furthest distance from the solar
surface is between 1.02 and 0.73
times the distance between the
Sun and the Earth.
First nearby
orbit of the Sun
Launch November 2018
July/August 2018
Antenna
Measures the radio emissions
that are thrown out by our
nearest star while a radio
antenna transmits data back to
control rooms on Earth.

Mercury

Venus

Sun Earth

Magnetometers
First ‘touch’ of the Sun Will measure the Sun’s
Venus flyby December 2024 magnetic fields and
September 2018 shockwaves.

"Models disagree on exactly where we should expect
this transition, and the predictions range between
ten and twenty solar radii. By going inside 10Rs, we
should see it – unless all the predictions are wrong".
The closest approach the PSP will make is 6.3 million
kilometres (3.9 million miles), or about nine solar
radii.
Just as the behaviour of the corona defies
common logic, the waves in the solar wind are
also pretty bizarre. We're used to light waves with
frequencies of a few hundred terahertz, and sound
waves at frequencies of a few thousand hertz. The
waves that form in plasma have names that could
be straight out of Star Trek: they are known as
magnetohydrodynamic waves, or Alfvén waves,
after the Swedish physicist Hannes Alfvén who
first described them in 1942. Alfvén was another
pioneering space scientist whose work was initially
dismissed by more established rivals, and it was
not until 1970 that he finally won recognition with
a Nobel Prize. The properties of Alfvén waves
The PSP under construction: it will have to endure conditions unlike any previous spacecraft are strange indeed. Instead of having frequencies

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