Posted on 05/04/2021 12:33:00 PM PDT by Red Badger
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is providing important new insights into the inner working of the Sun and to achieve that it's breaking records left, right, and center. Last week it became the closest human-made object ever to the Sun and the fastest human-made object ever, breaking its own previous records. It was clocked zipping through the Sun's outer atmosphere at 532,000 kilometers (330,000 miles) per hour.
To give you a sense of this achievement, let's put it in another context: Something made by humans just swung past the Sun at about 0.05 percent of the speed of light.
The solar probe already held the record for the fastest human-made object at 393,044 km/h (244,255 mph), and the closest to the Sun at 18.6 million kilometers (11.6 million miles), recorded back in February 2020. Now, it's smashed those, coming in at 10.4 million kilometers (6.5 million miles) from our star. And it's set to go even further and faster. The probe will take another 4 years to reach its closest approach, using flybys of Venus as a slingshot to get closer to the Sun.
The spacecraft will eventually enter an extremely close orbit around the Sun, getting as close as just 8.5 times the Sun’s radius from the solar surface. The next Venus flyby is on October 16, this year, and the next closest record-breaking encounter with the Sun will be on November 21.
At its final closest approach in 2025, it will reach a speed of 690,000 kilometers (430,000 miles) per hour, or 0.064 percent the speed of light.
Until then, it will continue to send back incredible images of its adventures through the Solar System.
AOC suggested they land at night when the sun is dark.
Almost 8 million miles per day.
I wonder what the EPA gas mileage is?..................
I would not doubt that at all...................
City MPG, Highway MPG...
Interstellar MPG?
Your mileage may vary.................
Elon Musk was heard to comment “Hold my beer..”
After all these years, NASA is suddenly the ‘good news’ US Government Agency! Of course the competition is hardly very challenging!
I watched the clip and found the whole movie is free on Youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXS4otb1SWc&ab_channel=YouTubeMovies
The scientific community is DYING to get us to use the metric system. Ain’t gonna happen, ever.
Not to be a Debbie Downer but it’s the sun’s gravity that did most of the work.
Metric show up in subtle ways. For instance, how many BTUs/hr are you light bulbs? Or is their power measured in watts?
Meh. My wife achieves that speed backing outta the garage.
That there was an episode of purple haze!
Metric!!
Because there’s 100 seconds in a minute...
100 minutes in an hour....
10 hours in a day...
1000 days in a year....
/SARC
Are British Thermal Units metric?
No, watts are metric.
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