Posted on 03/25/2018 3:00:17 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The Parker Solar Probe is the size of a small car and named for Prof. Eugene Parker, a 90-year-old American astrophysicist who in 1958 discovered the solar wind. It’s the first time that NASA has named a spacecraft after a living person.
The Parker probe... will make a beeline for Venus for the first of seven flybys. Each gravity assist will slow the craft down and reshape its orbit (see below), so it later can pass extremely close to the Sun. The first flyby is slated for late September.
...NASA typically will fly by a planet to increase the spacecraft’s speed by robbing energy from its orbital motion. But a probe can also approach a planet on a different trajectory to slow itself down or reconfigure its orbit.
The spacecraft will swing well within the orbit of Mercury and more than seven times closer than any spacecraft has come to the Sun before. When closest at just 3.9 million miles (6.3 million km), it will pass through the Sun’s outer atmosphere called the corona and be subjected to temperatures around 2,500°F (1,377°C).
The primary science goals for the mission are to trace how energy and heat move through the solar corona and to explore what accelerates the solar wind as well as solar energetic particles.
The vagaries of the solar wind, a steady flow of particles that “blows” from the Sun’s corona at more than million miles an hour, can touch Earth in beautiful ways as when it energizes the aurora borealis. But it can also damage spacecraft electronics and poorly protected power grids on the ground. That’s why scientists want to know more about how the corona works, in particular why it’s so much hotter than the surface of the Sun...
(Excerpt) Read more at universetoday.com ...
Wouldn't it be better to go at night?
I hope they go at night.
Beat me!
The Norks landed on the Sun at night.
At night, and in the winter.
*ping*
Will it have air-conditioning?
Contrary to popular opinion, you can’t land on the sun at night. That’s when they’ll sick the sun dogs on you.
Thanks fieldmarshaldj. Dang, the "go at night" joke has already been revisited a bunch of times, and starting with the first reply, impressive. I'm takin' the egghead way out:The HistoriesDuring the winter, the sun is driven out of his usual course by the storms, and removes to the upper parts of Libya. This is the whole secret in the fewest possible words; for it stands to reason that the country to which the Sun-god approaches the nearest, and which he passes most directly over, will be scantest of water, and that there the streams which feed the rivers will shrink the most.
by Herodotus
tr by George Rawlinson
Book II -- Euterpe
I think Sheila Jackson Lee will want to know if we will be able to see the flag planted on the surface of the sun.
The photino birds will be pissed ...
Mercury is 35m miles from the sun. The daytime temperature rises to 800°F. At night it drops to -290°F.
There’s gotta be that golden moment for maybe 5 minutes on Mercury somewhere around sunset when the temperature passes 72F on its way from 800F to -290F.
...it will pass through the Sun’s outer atmosphere called the corona and be subjected to temperatures around 2,500°F (1,377°C).
—
Did they pack the sunblock?
And a hat?
It might be closed.
“Mercury rotates once every 58.647 [Earth] days, which is exactly 2/3 of its orbital period of 87.970 days, so it turns on its axis exactly 1 1/2 times during one of its years...”
https://cseligman.com/text/planets/mercuryrot.htm
So I suppose if you had a mobile home and kept re-positioning it you might keep comfy. Just have Earth keep sending Chuck Berry.
It’s a tad warmer than quoted—several million C equivalent. Maybe they were thinking photosphere?
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