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NASA Preps Closest-Ever Sun Mission
coondoggie writes "NASA today said it had picked five experiments that will ride aboard one of its most ambitious space missions to explore the Sun. The Solar Probe, a car-sized spacecraft, is scheduled to launch no later than 2018 and will fly closer to the Sun's surface than any other probe, NASA stated. Ultimately the spacecraft's goals are to help scientists understand why the sun's outer atmosphere so much hotter than the sun's visible surface and what propels the solar wind that affects Earth and our solar system, NASA said."
Ultimately the spacecraft's goals are to help scientists understand why the sun's outer atmosphere so much hotter than the sun's visible surface and what propels the solar wind ...
I thought they'd figured that out (recently): Vibrations of the solar magnetic field line loops pump energy into the plasma fraction of the gas above the visible "surface", heating it. Reconnection of the lines cause the new loops to expand like released springs, catapulting the entrapped plasma outward.
Didn't that work out once they finished the math on the details?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The Russians were faced with the same dilemma.
They used a mirror.
You joke, but that's precisely what everyone does already. That gold foil that you see covering spacecraft is used because gold is an excellent reflector of infrared light.
from what I know, all that is based on heavy numerical simulations (prone to errors in the assumptions, lack of more thorough numerics, etc). The simulations are based on parameters determined from measurements made from distances longer than those that will be reached with this new probe, and on assumptions also extrapolated from everything observed "from here". Summed up, that explanation could be right or completely wrong. We have to measure more and from smaller distances.