Tag: Parker Solar Probe

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Makes Record-Breaking Approach to the Sun, Sends Back 1st Detailed Update

SPACE reports, “NASA’s Parker Solar Probe sent home its first detailed telemetry data soon after its record-breaking closest-ever approach to the sun. On Wednesday (Jan. 1), mission control at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland began receiving the Parker Solar Probe’s first telemetry — or housekeeping data — that confirms Parker’s systems and science instruments are ‘healthy and operating normally’ after its historic rendezvous with the sun, NASA shared in an update on Thursday (Jan. 2).”
Full Story (SPACE)

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Ready to ‘Touch the Sun’

The Washington Post reports that a risky NASA mission is about to send a spacecraft hurtling practically within spitting distance of the sun. The Parker Solar Probe is designed to “touch the sun,” as NASA puts it. On Dec. 24 the probewill make its closest pass, coming within 3.8 million miles of the surface, having been accelerated by gravity to more than 430,000 miles per hour.
Full Story (Washington Post – Subscription Publication)

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Flies Through Coronal Mass Ejection

Forbes reports that NASA’s Parker Solar Probe “has become the first spacecraft ever to fly through a coronal mass ejection from the sun—a powerful eruption of billions of tons of plasma.” The closest spacecraft to the sun, “launched in Aug. 2018, spent two days within a CME while just 5.7 million miles (9.2 million kilometers) from the solar surface.” For context, Mercury “is 23 million miles (37 million kilometers) from the sun and Earth is a whopping 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) distant.” As revealed in a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, Parker “passed right through the CME on Sept. 22, 2022, crossing the wake of its leading edge—its shock wave.” The moments were “captured by the probe’s Wide-field Imager for Solar Probe (WISPR) instrument and are published on YouTube.” Parker Solar Probe Project Scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory Nour Raouafu said, “This is the closest to the sun we’ve ever observed a CME. We’ve never seen an event of this magnitude at this distance.”
Full Story (Forbes)

Boeing Positive on T-7 Potential

Air Force Times reported that Boeing Company officials are confident that the “high-tech methods Boeing used to design and build the T-7 are saving time, simplifying processes, improving quality and cutting down on defects.” Boeing Vice President and T-7 Program Manager Paul Niewald said, “Everything’s in 3D, everything’s digital. It’s an authoritative source of data. So our technical publications, our flight manuals, our service manuals, they all use the same data that the engineers are using, that our mechanics are using to build the airplane.”
Full Story (Air Force Times)

Parker Solar Probe Bombarded by Space Dust, Causing Plasma Explosions

CNET News reports that NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is being bombarded by space dust “at such speed that its body is constantly experiencing plasma explosions.” A team of scientists “at the University of Colorado, Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory studied the severity of these impacts,” finding the explosions could knock off debris from Parker and obstruct its cameras, causing it to misalign its heat shield and risk the satellite’s integrity.
Full Story (CNET News)

Parker Solar Probe Makes Ninth Solar Flyby

SPACE reports that the Parker Solar Probe made its ninth pass by the sun Monday at 3:10 p.m. EDT. The Parker Solar Probe is “focusing on understanding the mechanism by which the sun’s atmosphere gets so hot – thousands of degrees hotter than the sun’s surface – and the origins of the solar wind, a constant flood of charged particles streaming across the solar system.” The spacecraft matched a record for “the closest approach to the sun and fastest-moving object of a spacecraft,” a record which it will break when it returns to the sun in October.
Full Story (SPACE)

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Captures Photo of Venus During Close Flyby

SPACE reports that the NASA Parker Solar Probe completed its fourth swing past Venus on February 20. The probe is on a mission to fly closer to the sun than any previous spacecraft, but needs to “whiz past Venus a total of seven times, with each pass pulling the spacecraft closer to the sun.” The Parker Solar Probe is equipped with an instrument called the Wide-field Imager for Parker Solar Probe, which is “designed to capture distant, visible-light images of phenomena surrounding the sun, like the solar wind that constantly shoots charged particles out from the sun across the solar system or the coronal mass ejections that vomit blobs of matter into space, according to NASA.” The image it captured provided a “fascinating view” of Venus.
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NASA Parker Solar Probe Performs Close Flyby of Sun

SPACE reports that the NASA Parker Solar Probe spacecraft made another close approach to the sun on Sunday. The spacecraft will “conduct a total of four close approaches to the sun, plus two Venus flybys” this year. On Sunday, the Parker Solar Probe “made its closest approach to the sun at 12:39 p.m. EST,” at which time the spacecraft was “about 8.4 million miles (13.5 million kilometers) away from the sun’s surface and traveling at nearly 290,000 mph (470,000 kph), according to the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, which runs the spacecraft.” The Parker Solar Probe will fly past Venus on February 20 before it makes another close approach to the sun on April 29.
Full Story (SPACE)