Slashdot Mirror
NASA Plans Probe to the Sun
FudRucker writes "For more than 400 years, astronomers have studied the sun from afar. Now NASA has decided to go there. 'We are going to visit a living, breathing star for the first time,' says program scientist Lika Guhathakurta of NASA Headquarters. 'This is an unexplored region of the solar system and the possibilities for discovery are off the charts.'"
Airplane 2.
The opposite of progress is congress
And how exactly do you plan to do that? Do we have any material that won't melt under the intense heat?
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
select a few of our favorite people as crew for that mission?
I volunteer my boss to be the first asshole on the sun!
I guess providing power to the device via solar power would be a good option.
After all...It will be right next to the source.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
SPF Eleventy Million
We have abandoned our mission. Our star is dying. All our science. All our hopes, our... our dreams, are foolish! In the face of this, we are dust, nothing more. Unto this dust, we return. When he chooses for us to die, it is not our place to challenge God!
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
I would imagine most things would be, as I strongly suspect the charts to burn up prior to impact.
One could say the sun is exhaling, but what's it inhaling?
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
If they were, we wouldn't have to read through all these lame jokes about "doing it at night."
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
They ought to wait for the development of the metaphasic shield in 2369.
"That's hot!"
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
With NASA's record, they ought to have named this project "Icarus", 'cause that's what will happen to it.
The name of the mission is Solar Probe+; I can't decide whether a name like Icarus would be more appropriate. Then again, naming your project after something that burns up might not be the best idea.
Of course, when the mission is done I would expect them to send the craft into the sun.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
1) The sun is a mass of incandescent gas
2) A gigantic nuclear furnace, where hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees.
3) The sun is hot - the sun it not a place where we can live, but here on Earth there'd be no life without the light it gives.
"This won't hurt you as much as it hurts me!"
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
If you go here
there's this data:
"Gas particles in the corona can reach temperatures of up to 1,700,000 ÂC"
- Prentice Hall Earth Science. Engelwood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1987: 73.
So wouldn't that tend to prevent anything man made from getting near the sun, much less its "surface" / chromosphere?
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
The scientists and astrophysicists themselves agree that the Sun is going to become a Red Giant and it will expand past the orbit of Jupiter. Instead of just setting up the instruments and wait for the Sun to come to us, these typical, arrogant, pie-in-the-sky, ivory tower, disconnected elites are coming up with yet another proposal to tax and spend out tax dollars. Enough!. Just wait. What is 5 billion years to a government program? I ask.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
But I bet it was suggested repeatedly.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
In the news: "NASA Scientists discover trace possibilities of water on the sun, 3 more trips planned"
"...man has yearned to destroy the sun"
-----
Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.
Super Holes and Black Novas...... I wonder if that probe can find more insight by looking deeper into Uranus...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Pffft. Everyone knows you should use metaphasic shielding.
NASA plans to probe Uranus
..just don't put any trilithium on it k?
-- John Sladek, The Müller-Fokker Effect. (A very funny SF book)
Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think. --Niels Bohr
Seriously, though, it's not quite that simple. "The area around the sun" is very hot, but it's not very dense. IANAThermalEngineer, but I imagine they have one or two at NASA, and I'm guessing that they can come up with some kind of effective radiative cooling system. (Though perhaps they'll just rely on a Thermal Protective System (aka "heat shield"), like they did for the original Solar Probe.)
He's obviously a big fan of Forest Lawn.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Fortunately, the incidental music has already been written.
Blank until
There are reasons we should stay away from the sun!
Yeah, just like Tang came out of the Gemini flights, who knows what would result. If this were a manned mission, one possible outcome could be the development of a sun screen lotion with a 10^12 SPF rating.
As previously noted it will be a manned mission with Tom Cruise being the only crew.
Well, if you want to man this mission then I for one don't see any problem with it.
I'd pack some really good sun screen.
When I have a kid, I want to put him in one of those strollers for twins and then run around the mall looking frantic.
NASA knows the probe will burn up in the sun, so that's why they plan to land it at night.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Shouldn't it be "Solar Probe++"?
4000BCE: "A sun god you say.. hmmm.."
Atlantis: "A blue sun you say.."
It's not exactly a technological advance worth bragging about. It's a little like orange juice, except it's not as good for you and it tastes like android piss. Woo-hoo.
"I'm sorry NASA, but the Princess is in another solar system."
I guess they decided to stick that probe where the sun does shine...call the probe the Enimator?
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
'cause there's no way I want a real life version of this. Really, the movie was bad enough...
Should have been named "NASA Plans to get Hott".
Yeah.
That would have grabbed my attention. Hott... with 2 t's.
On a serious note, I hope this will be a manned mission?
Smithers: Well, Sir, you've certainly vanquished all your enemies: the Elementary School, the local tavern, the old age home...you must be very proud.
Burns: No, not while my greatest nemesis still provides our customers with free light, heat and energy. I call this enemy...the sun.
Since the beginning of time man has yearned to destroy the sun. I will do the next best thing...block it out!
(look, Ed... somebody didn't get it.. AND they commented!)
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
They could just throw it out the window when they get there.
Alternatively, NASA could staff it with some politicians that will be out of work in a few months anyway. Perfect time for one of their famous metric conversion errors.
Ignorance is the root of all evil.
TFA doesn't explain how this thing is going to get the data back. Doesn't the radiation of the Sun interfere with that? I only ask because there is no mention of the probe coming back to Earth.
There is more to science than physics!
www.iomalfunction.blogspot.com
sorry:P Okay, it's that kind of day. Let's just hope they build it better then that spaceship in the movie Sunshine.. talk about single point failures.
the title of this movie is called Probe, starring Bruce Willis as Bruce Willis...
Set controls for the heart of the sun.
Should have named it Icarus
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
Wow, apparently slashdot's sarcasm and humor detectors are completely and utterly b0rked today....
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
I can think of a few people I'd like to see volunteer to fly into space... and be shot into the sun.
Ross Perot, Dan Quayle, Tonya Harding, Al Sharpton, Courtney Love, Spike Lee, Tom Arnold, Pauly Shore, Rosie O'Donnell and Dr. Laura
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
really?
The recent science fiction movie Sunshine described taking a special spacecraft close to the Sun. The premise of the movie and final resolution were bogus to me. However the issues of near solar travel and the special effects were interesting.
Elite has Landed! woohoo ;)
Anybody remember that mission?
Hell, it's 2008 allready...
Anybody remember that game?
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Day and night is caused by the rotation of the Earth.
rotation, shmotation. As anyone who's ever looked at the sun knows. the sun is roughly the size of a 50 cent piece and at night it comes to rest somewhere out west, probably arizona. Or so Calvin's dad told meSome drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
What do you mean "today"?
Blank until
What's the point of putting someone on the sun? *whine whine*
You can't have a good story about probing without mention of Uranus...
The mission is 7 years long. In that time, wouldn't the heat shield reach thermal equilibrium, and become extremely hot itself, if not melt?
Maybe they're just not going as close as we all think.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
* Whoosh *
I hope all of this probing doesn't give the sun plutoids.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
That's what __they__ want you to believe!
...the same medium that rocket exhaust pushes against.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Great movie until the last 20 minutes. Still worth it though.
They might as well be walking on the sun. This mission is not going to go down the sunny side of the road if you catch my drift. No matter how often NASA says "let the sun shine", the house of the rising sun is no place for a probe. Walking on sunshine is just a bad idea; not to mention that the people of the sun might be annoyed if we drop probes on their head. Even if we wait until the midnight sun, a sleeping sun is still very hot and this probe is likely to spend entire seasons in the sun. I mean, everybody's free (to wear sunscreen), but it's jut too sunny out there. I think we should focus our attention away from the sun before we screw something up and kill the sun - I certainly don't want a black hole sun in my solar system. Let's look for a star that has already died - dead stars still burn, after all.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Awesome, it's Earth's first Class 4 probe.
sudo eat my shorts
I don't feel myself rotating.
I drank what? -- Socrates
David Brin made a proposal like this in a 1980 book called Sundiver. I seem to recall that they used a 'refrigerator' laser as a heat transfer mechanism. It has been a few years since I read the book though. It was part of his Uplift series.
Holy Cow! 16 out of 19 comments modded +5 are also modded Funny.
Saying that the shade of Venus is very cold, paints a rather mis-leading picture. It's not the same thing as staying in, say, really cold air. As you say, only radiation transfers heat in space, so _all_ the cooling effect you're going to get is whatever the craft radiates. That's not very much. It also depends of the fourth square of temperature, as per Steffan-Boltzman, it's a lot harder to lose the last (or next to last) 10% than it is to lose the first 10%.
But more importantly, you start gaining it right back, as soon as you're no longer behind Venus. It'll take years to go from Venus's orbit to where they want to get, simply because it's that hard to go down into a gravity well. You need to lose a heck of a lot of energy, but being that it's in space and you don't have friction as a cheap brake, it means as much firing the rockets as if you wanted to gain the same energy. So it'll have a heck of a lot of time to warm up right back.
And again, see Steffan-Boltzman. The farther you got from equilibrium by sitting in the shade, the bigger the difference will be between incoming energy and energy you radiate, hence the faster you warm right up. If you managed to get, say, 100K lower than equilibrium in the sunlight, the first 25K of that gain will be lost a lot faster than the last 25K.
In short, past a point, every Kelvin you go lower by sitting in the shade, will take longer to get it, and the faster you'll lose it when you get out of the shade.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
It would not be easy to do, but physically possable. First off the Sun'ssurface is not all that, hot. Just under 6000K. That is about the temperure of the filiment inside a light bulb. The collon expression for this temperure is "white hot". Welding torches are much hotter than this. There are plenty of materials that will work at this temperure.
Next problem is how to get ruid of the heat? There is only one way. You have to conduct the heat to a radiator that is hotter then the surounding temperure. That means the radiator must be hotter then "white hot". A laser working in the ulta vilot would in theory work. That laser could radiate thouands of watts into space.
In theroy it could be done but not with today's technology. It would take a LOT of breakthoughs befor ths could happen.
That said. Isn't there already a "mission to the Sun" there is a spacecraft in solar polar orbit a I write this. No need to actually go to the Sun when you can look with a telscope from orbit.
I can see that this topic is going to spark some heated debate.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
The name of the mission is Solar Probe+ (pronounced "Solar Probe plus")
...and how else would you pronounce it?
Ya, simple in concept, I suppose Peltier elements could be used as the heat-to-electric converters and from there is a simple matter to focus the energy away from ship. much easier from an engineering standpoint than using passive radiators (monofiliament, etc as mentioned earlier in this thread.)
sig sig sig siggy sig
Stolen from a webpage (http://chrisdamato.blogspot.com/2007/03/ask-calvins-dad.html) from someone who stole them from someone who stole them from Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson.
Illustrating the value of a good explanation in science education!
Calvin: Why does the sun set?
Dad: It's because hot air rises. The sun's hot in the middle of the day, so it rises high in the sky. In the evening then, it cools down and sets.
Calvin: Why does it go from east to west?
Dad: Solar wind.
Calvin: Why does the sky turn red as the sun sets?
Dad: That's all the oxygen in the atmosphere catching fire.
Calvin: Where does the sun go when it sets?
Dad: The sun sets in the west. In Arizona actually, near Flagstaff. That's why the rocks there are so red.
Calvin: Don't the people get burned up?
Dad: No, the sun goes out as it sets. That's why it's dark at night.
Calvin: Doesn't the sun crush the whole state as it lands?
Dad: Ha ha, of course not. Hold a quarter up. See, the sun's just about the same size.
Calvin: I thought I read that the sun was really big.
Dad: You can't believe everything you read, I'm afraid.
Calvin: How come old photographs are always black and white? Didn't they have color film back then?
Dad: Sure they did. In fact, those old photographs are in color. It's just that the world was black and white then. The world didn't turn color until sometime in the 1930s, and it was pretty grainy color for a while, too.
Calvin: But then why are old paintings in color?! If the world was black and white, wouldn't artists have painted it that way?
Dad: Not necessarily. A lot of great artists were insane.
Calvin: But... But how could they have painted in color anyway? Wouldn't their paints have been shades of gray back then?
Dad: Of course, but they turned colors like everything else did in the '30s.
Calvin: So why didn't old black and white photos turn color too?
Dad: Because they were color pictures of black and white, remember?
Calvin: Dad, will you explain the theory of relativity to me? I don't understand why time goes slower at great speed.
Dad: It's because you keep changing time zones. See, if you fly to California, you gain three hours on a five-hour flight, right? So if you go at the speed of light, you gain more time, because it doesn't take as long to get there. Of course, the theory of relativity only works if you're going west.
Calvin: Why do my eyes shut when I sneeze?
Dad: If your lids weren't closed, the force of the explosion would blow your eyeballs out and stretch the optic nerve, so your eyes would flop around and you'd have to point them with your hands to see anything.
Calvin: How do bank machines work?
Dad: Well, let's say you want 25 dollars. You punch in the amount and behind the machine there's a guy with a printing press who makes the money and sticks it out this slot.
Calvin: Sort of like the guy who lives up in our garage and opens the door?
Dad: Exactly.
Calvin: What causes the wind?
Dad: Trees sneezing.
Calvin: Why does ice float?
Dad: Because it's cold. Ice wants to get warm, so it goes to the top of liquids to be nearer to the sun.
Calvin: Is that true?
Dad: Look it up and find out.
Calvin: I should just look up stuff in the first place.
Calvin: How come you know so much?
Dad: It's all in the book you get when you become a father.
But then we'll let bush take the first ride on Ark B. "You never know, you Might make it..."
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
I thought in the vaccum of space, there is no temperature - only where there is an atmosphere to retain heat, is there a temperature?
For example, I think I read on here about a new body-fitting space-suit (similar to the one Seven of Nine wears on Voyager, but with an S&M Mask/Helmet), a person could go out of a space ship, and be in the vaccum of space without an actual pressure suit - the same article suggested that we wouldn't need a pressure suit at all, since our skin is resilient enough to withstand the lack of pressure (we would need a source to air), again, the same article suggested that it's not the "cold" of space that is the problem it's keeping the people in space cool because we radiate so much heat, and with a small atmosphere around us, it acts as thermal barrier for dissipation.
So, take that into context, you have an object flying at the Sun. Said object would be stripped of it's local atmosphere by solar winds, therefore, heat might not be as big of a problem as we thought?
Seems that the sun works mostly off gravity, that it creates pressures so high that atoms heat up and fuse together, and the resulting energy presses against gravity and forces particles outward. (remember, gravity is a fairly weak force), so, while we can assume the temperature at the sun is XYZ-K, with there not being any thermal loss between the sun and the earth, could it be that our predictions are wrong - that perhaps the sun as as large as it is because it's dissipating so much energy that it's blowing itself outwards (cooling as it goes by conducting heat to surrounding particles by impact) to it's size, only to have the particles fall back inward?
Long post, just some thoughts I have on it...
I will be pissed if they break the sun!
I hope they are smart enough to land on the dark side.
My God, It's full of star
Don't go to a brothel if you want to buy broth
I will probe Uranus during the night if all of you lame joke repeaters don't shut up. I wonder how do they plan preventing the craft's solar panels from burning. I think they'd need a lot more than liquid cooling and capability of retracting them behind the heat-shield. It seems to me that the tech-heavy craft would need a lot more power than it could generate and store while in distances safe enough for extending solar panels.
I for one welcome our ... ow, ow, ow, ow, OOOWWWW! Shit. Go away!
Table-ized A.I.
Well duh, it spins around it's hub obviously.
'Don't worry' said the trees when they saw the axe coming, 'The handle is one of us.'
I mean, the psychologist guy was clearly starting to go a bit baffy. Let 'em find the other ship, find the crew gone all toasty and burned, and gradually figure out what happened, just in time for their own to do the same to them. (And then push butan to detonate the thingy at the last moment, in a heroic standoff thingummy)
I miss Calvin and Hobbes!
Sunshine gives me goosebumps every time I see it. Sure, the whole Pinbacker thing (which is a Dark Star reference) is retarded, but the rest of the movie is simply AMAZING.
Never have I seen interplanetary space travel depicted so realistically and soberly (other than the fact that they have gravity on board, but hey). Never have I seen a movie that made space seem more dangerous. Death is only a few feet away at all times. Plus the psychology of knowing that your death is almost certain, but going on a mission anyway...that movie just blows my mind. And the Underworld soundtrack is AWESOME.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
So don't hesitate and join The flat earth society.
We need your help!
Sorry, this one's much better...
That Red Giant stuff is just a big conspiracy to get those dirty rotten scientists their grant money! Just another pointless scaremongering tactic from leftists. The sun is not going to get bigger, consider this: when I light something on fire, once the whole thing is burning the flame does not get bigger, it *dies down.* Any heating or growing right now is all part of a natural cycle of the sun, you will see a reverse trend soon enough.
Can't you people use any common sense?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
A solar flare probably knocked them out of calibration...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Gosh... I hope they at least land at night when its cooler....
Joe Investor
Carry some cake mix, bake it on the surface, bring it back and sell a slice for a FORTUNE. Am I the only one here who thinks $$$$$$?
Not to worry...they plan to land in winter at the north pole when it is the coolest -- hoping to find frozen icebergs to land on and hoping global warming hasn't taken them out yet...
Guess we'll know soon the full extent of Global Warming...
Didn't I just see an episode of Dr. Who with a living, breathing star? Weak NASA, very weak. Come up with your own plots for once.