On the eve of Christmas, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe will reach a record close to the Sun – 6.2 million km, moving at a speed of 690 thousand km/h.
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe will make a record flyby on December 24, coming within 6.2 million kilometers of the Sun, reports The Guardian and Space.com.
This was made possible thanks to many years of preparation and use of the gravitational field of Venus.
Launched on August 12, 2018, the Parker probe entered the solar atmosphere in 2021, and now continues to perform unique scientific tasks. This time it will move at a speed of 690 thousand kilometers per hour, which remains the fastest object created by man.
Mission scientist Nour Raouafi emphasized the importance of this moment: “What Parker Solar Probe will do on Christmas Eve this year is truly unprecedented. We have dreamed of this moment for more than 16 years.”
Parker is helping scientists answer important questions: how the solar wind forms, why the Sun’s atmosphere is hotter than its surface, and how coronal mass ejections—huge clouds of plasma that sweep through space—create .
The first signal of the successful completion of the maneuver is expected to come on December 27, and scientific data will be available in the new year.
This flyby will be the first of three record-breaking approaches by the Parker probe planned for 2025. The next ones will take place on March 22 and June 19, when the device will again reach a similar distance.
“This is an example of NASA’s bold mission to do what has never been done before to answer long-standing questions about our universe. We can’t wait to get our first status update from the spacecraft and begin getting science data back in time. “It’s coming weeks,” said Arik Posner, a research fellow in the program.
It was previously reported that astronomers have discovered for the first time a pair of stars orbiting each other near a supermassive black hole.
Source: korrespondent
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