The NASA probe Parker Solar sample flew through the external atmosphere of the sun and, according to the US room trip authority, has the first spaceship. The passage by the sun corona took only a few hours and took place on April 28, 2021.
"Touching the stuff of which the sun itself is made" will provide a wide range of information about our central star and its influence on the solar system, according to the statement. In the solar corona, particles and magnetic fields were investigated. The first results of this flyby have now been published in the journal »Physical Review Letters«.
The probe circles the sun on an elliptical path and will approach it even further in the coming months and years. At her last densely rapprochement (Perihel) on November 21, 2021, she was around 8.5 million kilometers above the surface. It is currently moving at a speed of more than 590,000 kilometers per hour. At this pace, she could cover the Earth moon distance in less than an hour. A few weeks earlier, she had got momentum at Venus.
The Sun's atmosphere ends at the Alfvén surface.
Unlike the earth, the sun has no fixed surface. The components of their atmosphere are bound to the sun by gravity and magnetic forces, but are pushed away by it by heat and radiation pressure. From a certain limit, gravity and magnetic fields are too weak to prevent the escape of the material - it becomes sunwind that disappears into space without ever being captured by the sun. The limit from which this happens is called Alfvén surface. It marks the outer end of the solar atmosphere. During their flight past the sun last April, the Parker Solar sample passed this border several times, which does not stretch around the sun spherical, but has numerous irregularities and outfit.
The probe had come to the sun as close to the sun just a few months after it started in August 2018. At that time it was closer to the sun than 42.7 million kilometers and had thus broken the German-American Helios 2 probe's German-American Helios 2 probe in April 1976. Until the end of her mission, it will come to the sun at 6.16 million kilometers.
Protected by an almost twelve-centimeter-thick carbon fiber tank, the approximately 680-kilogram aircraft the size of a small car should be able to withstand extreme heat and radiation. NASA expects the mission, scheduled for 2025, to provide insights into why the corona is many times hotter than the surface of the Sun and thus also about the functioning of stars. The data could also make future predictions of "space weather" more accurate. The aim is to better understand the solar wind. Depending on their strength, the stream of charged particles can interfere with terrestrial telecommunications and satellite connections when it hits Earth.
Note: In an original version of this article, the weight of the probe was incorrectly stated. We corrected the mistake.
