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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.
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Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
SPF Eleventy Million
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.
"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.
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..."
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
In the news: "NASA Scientists discover trace possibilities of water on the sun, 3 more trips planned"
If you go here
[snip]So wouldn't that tend to prevent anything man made from getting near the sun, much less its "surface" / chromosphere?
RS
From your own link: Though the corona's temperature is high it's molecules are so far apart that the gases release little heat. If a person were to stand on the sun's corona they wouldn't burn, they would freeze in the near vacuum of the corona.
The particles have a high temperature (are moving quickly) but the particle density is low. Therefore the heat will be small. Heat is the flow of energy from a hotter body to a cooler body.
That's a 21-year-old textbook. I think it's had plenty of time to cool off.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
Pffft. Everyone knows you should use metaphasic shielding.
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.)
What about radiant heat?
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
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.
"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?
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!
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
Should have named it Icarus
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.
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.
And it radiates via what medium?
Infrared photons would be my guess, just like most radiant heat.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Though the corona's temperature is high it's molecules are so far apart that the gases release little heat. If a person were to stand on the sun's corona they wouldn't burn, they would freeze in the near vacuum of the corona.
Oh, they'd burn alright - but it would be a really bad tan. The side facing the Sun would absorb insane amounts of radiation; the side facing away would freeze... A good example (though far away from the corona): the extreme surface temperatures of Mercury, depending on the amount of sunlight, range from around 100 K to over 700 K.
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 *
...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....
Apparently a NASA spacecraft soon.
Awesome, it's Earth's first Class 4 probe.
sudo eat my shorts
I don't feel myself rotating.
I drank what? -- Socrates
And it radiates via what medium?
Luminiferous aether, of course. Ask a silly question...
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
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.
I can see that this topic is going to spark some heated debate.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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.
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.