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NASA's Newest Spacecraft Will Fly Through the Sun's Scorching Hot Atmosphere (theverge.com)
In T-minus three days, NASA will launch a car-sized spacecraft to investigate our Sun's scorching hot atmosphere. "The vehicle is the Parker Solar Probe, and it's set to launch at 3:33AM ET on Saturday, August 11th, from Cape Canaveral, Florida. "It'll be riding on a Delta IV Heavy rocket made by the United Launch Alliance, which will send the probe zooming toward the inner Solar System," reports The Verge. "Just six weeks after launch, Parker will do a flyby of Venus to alter its route slightly, and then six weeks later, the vehicle will be in the corona. Over the course of seven years, Parker will do 24 orbits around the star, as well as six more Venus flybys so that it can get even closer to the Sun's surface over time." From the report: NASA has long wanted to send a vehicle to the Sun's atmosphere, but such a mission has been considered impossible until the last few decades. This region of space, known as the corona, is filled with tiny, energetic particles that can reach above 3 million degrees Fahrenheit. Any vehicle that ventures near this region must have sophisticated protection to keep from melting. But thanks to advancements in carbon manufacturing and other key areas of engineering, NASA has been able to create a vehicle with a state-of-the-art heat shield and other crucial cooling systems. The result: the spacecraft will stay at room temperature in some of the hottest places in the Solar System.
The Sun's corona is actually 300 times hotter than the surface of the Sun, and no one understands why. The region gets so hot that chunks of the corona actually accelerate and break away from the immense pull of the Sun at supersonic speeds. These so-called solar winds shoot highly energized particles out in all directions, which then slam into surrounding planets. Parker is tasked with investigating the mechanics of the breakaway effect and why the atmosphere is so much hotter than its source.
The Sun's corona is actually 300 times hotter than the surface of the Sun, and no one understands why. The region gets so hot that chunks of the corona actually accelerate and break away from the immense pull of the Sun at supersonic speeds. These so-called solar winds shoot highly energized particles out in all directions, which then slam into surrounding planets. Parker is tasked with investigating the mechanics of the breakaway effect and why the atmosphere is so much hotter than its source.
Nothing hard about that. Let's see them do it during the day.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Because space-x isnâ(TM)t the only game in town you musk groupie
Sounds like a good way to destroy Musk's Roadster!
chunks of the corona actually accelerate and break away from the immense pull of the Sun at supersonic speeds.
What's the speed of sound at the surface of the Sun, compared to sea level on Earth?
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
is that if they can keep a satellite at room temperature whilst dipping itself in the corona of the sun, why is aircon complicated, unreliable and expensive?
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Because it's been planned for YEARS.
You don't build a satellite, then get the lowest bidder. You have to figure out where you want the spacecraft, then which launch vehicles are powerful enough to get something around the weight you estimate into the proper place. Then you have all of the fiddly bits to make sure it's small enough and light enough so you can still reach the right orbit.
(disclaimer: I used to work for the Solar Data Analysis Center)
STEREO's launch was almost delayed (even further than it already was because of the strike + spy satellites cutting in line) because they had to swap to a heavier battery for the self destruct of the second stage ... JPL managed to find an alternate orbit that they could achieve with the extra weight that would still let the mission have a chance at accomplishing its goals.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
The highest melting point of the known matter (Tungsten) is 3422 Celsius. Not 1 million Celsius as the people does think.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I guess "In T minus 3 days" sounds "technical" and "spacey" ?
To a non-technical person who wants to post on a site that used to have news for nerds.
after a couple of trial ....
finally the spacecraft will timetravel to the past.
They're going to arrive in the winter.
Can we have umbrellas and clothes made of this material for next summer? I'd love to be protected by materials... DESIGNED TO WITHSTAND THE SUN'S CORONA.
Right, because 2 million K or C is soooooo much more accessible than 3 million F. It just means "really really hot". They are giving us one significant digit in a 7-place number.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Carbon
Tungsten
Carbon Sublimation point 3915 K (3642 C, 6588 F)
Tungsten Melting point 3695 K (3422 C, 6192 F)
Carbon is a fun element, that is why we like to make materials out of it. It can be arranged in a lot of ways, plus we can mix it with a lot of other elements. Sometimes the trick isn't to absorb all the heat but transfer it somewhere else.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
If we have the technology to keep part of it at room temperature, then we should have sent actual astronauts instead.
And I am sure you are the first to volunteer to shoot around the sun at 450,000 mph for 7 years in a craft that will most likely be sent spiraling into the Sun once the mission is complete. Oh, yeah, and because the heat shield is only on one side of the craft, any error in attitude means the craft melts and you die a horribly painful but probably pretty quick death.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
How do you even get to a point where you can choose the right instrumentation for a job like that? I mean how do you know which instruments would be useful to investigate the Corona?
All kinds of cameras (that measure different wave-lengths)?
A pocket-sized Laser-Interferometer for detecting Gravitational waves would be cool. But I doubt that we are there yet.
Side-note: It seems that every-time I read about a probe, I discover that it was a replacement of a probe that was struck down due to budget cuts. NASA seems quite vulnerable too this. I wonder if ESA faces similar problems?
Musk wamts to go to Mars and this is in the opposite direction.
maybe if a item has say 6 degrees of freedom to vibrate in, then restricting 2 degrees will make the other 4 vibrate more.
thus if a item is susceptible to a electro-magneticfield, say, like caught in a spiderweb, then adding energy (heat) will allow it to reach higher vibration freuqenzy faster?
of course one could argue, that this cannot work, because the energy added just is wasted on the electro-magnetic field (the spiderweb). but consider the special case of the sun, where the particle never was really free: it was "born: inside the sun and was not captured from the outside. thus the "life-story" of a star-born particle is different then one liberated and recaptured?
anyways, let's hope the gathered data gets published far and wide.
Hasn't anyone hear of convection heating?
The sun is a big ball of magnetism. These charged particles get stuck in these bands of magnetism and go round and round kinda like... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ipZ4vdivbU
Was that so hard to figure out????
Nathan
Because Musk is too busy launching military and spy satellites into LEO. Science isn't profitable enough.
The heat from the sun is almost entirely radiant. The only particles leaving the sun are helium atoms, which are really hot but they don't transfer a lot of heat. So, basically, you cover the probe in a whole bunch of very reflective foil and that's enough to keep the thing cool enough. If you look at the pictures, there's a big heat shield on one end (probably foil-covered ceramic) and the rest is covered in foil.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Leela: Fry, night lasts two weeks on the moon.
Moon Farmer: Yep, drops down to minus-173.
Fry: Celsius or Fahrenheit?
Moon Farmer: First one, then the other.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
The Thunderbolts Project did a video about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... (if you've studied the Electric Universe theory, the corona's temperature is no mystery)
Privacy begins with
"In T-Minus three days"? Someone is trying to sound cool without understanding what they're saying...
You can say "in three days" or you can say "it is now T minus three days," the latter meaning "three days before launch."
Um, "supersonic speed" is meaningless in this context, as there is no air near the sun.
Not to mention that while the corona is really HOT, it's also very thin, so it's not carrying very much heat. The total energy impacting a school-bus is going to be about, mumble, not much.
$120 million experiment. Result: Its really really hot, like super hot. Just crazy hot.
You know those large islands of plastic that have been forming on our planet? They could be the payload. Drop them off once the rocket is close enough. No need for harmful pollutants in our atmosphere. No need to find or make incinerators big enough. (We can use the off switch now). No need to raise the earth's temperature by burning all that trash.
In T-minus three days, NASA will launch
If you don't understand geek talk, don't use it. T-minus three days is _now_, with T being the launch time.
Basically they are saying "Three days before launch time, NASA will launch"... Good grief.
For non-disposable spaceships it is.
Not to mention the lack of life support systems. He'd be dead before he got off Earth.
I'd be skeptical that the radiation would kill them first, heat shield or not.
Pardon my naivete about associating research with some kind of payoff for human beings ...
... that we should have our back pocket picked by the IRS to figure out?
But this is the kind of thing that inclines me to wonder if we should be ejecting our space program into the corona.
Can you imagine dying without knowing why the sun's atmosphere is hotter than its surface? You know what? I can. I am completely OK with that.
What could possibly be the answer that anyone would care about
"Actually, the hottest part of the candle flame is the blue part, at 1670 degrees F (1400 C.) That is where the flame has the most oxygen and you are getting complete combustion. The reddish part is the coolest part, about 1070 F (800C)."
Lets face it, we already know the answer, but the idea of sending a vehicle around the sun is kind of hot.
Unfortunately though, considering the taxpayer $$$ going into this, I have to assume that because we already know the answer, then this must be some kind of military test.
Kudos though, best those cheap chinese lazors won't hit 3 million degrees!
You can't expect much from the original article. Use of "zooming" was the giveaway.
There's still some science amid the toddler talk. Be grateful?
And ... loving it
As a non-USian, I have no idea OTTOMH whether F scales within the same order of magnitude as C and K in the millions of degrees mark. Those sorts of temperatures are only used in physics, which almost exclusively uses C or K. So yeah, it would have been much easier for most of the world for TFS to have used C or K, as in my mind it could have been been the difference between 50,000 deg C or 50 million deg C.
Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sn.
Well, from now on you can't feign ignorance!
As an American (on a US website, BTW) I share your frustration, but if it's any consolation our engineering schooling requires being fluent in both sets of standards, which is a pain in the ass. Look up slugs as a unit of mass if you want to crawl out of your skin.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Exactly. The hyperbole talks about 3 million degrees of heat, and then alludes to the spacecraft entering that barbeque. I didn't think earth people had anything like 3 million degree insulation. What material would it be? The atoms are all smashed down to helium or hydrogen or deuterium, or just plain out-of-this-world boiling energy and escaping neutrinos - which would soon turn the spacecraft into helium, deurerium, hydgrogen and massive amounts of energy. Some place further out maybe the spacecraft could be lithium for a while. Talk about your shape shifting stealth craft!
That does bring up a question. Would the shape shifting go through the entire periodic table, you physicists out there?
But, as it turns out, per your link reference, the spacecraft will get only within about 3 million miles, and the insulation is good for 2500 degrees, which apparently will be the temperature max at that location. Boy, the power function really drops it quick. Way less hyperbolic tho ...