The holiday season is not going to be easy for Houston. At NASA headquarters, New Year’s Eve will be marked by the passage, millions of kilometers from Earth, of the Parker probe closest to the Sun. It will get closer, reaching a minimum distance of 6.1 million kilometers.
Taking advantage of the gravity of the celestial body, the probe will accelerate significantly, reaching 690,000 km/h. It will then beat its own record for approach and speed, thus becoming the closest and fastest object ever built by Man.
For Nour Rawafi, project leader, this new approach should “make history”. In his speech, he recalled that NASA’s Parker probe has already made it possible to collect a large amount of data on our Sun. He nevertheless specifies that this set of data will take years to be analyzed, understood and exploited by scientists around the world.
Because this passage closest to the Sun will be the closest, but also the last. By moving away from the sun, the probe will not be able to avoid Venus, and take advantage of its gravity to get closer to the Sun in the future.
Parker Solar Probe: a mission like no other
Launched in 2018, NASA’s Parker probe’s mission was to study the solar corona. NASA was particularly interested in finding out how this part of our star could be so hot. With a mass of 685 kilograms initially, the probe cost the American taxpayer $1.5 billion.
Since then, the probe has moved closer to the Sun, studying it in partnership with the Europe Solar Orbiter probe. In 2022 the two objects even managed to align themselves perfectly to study the same packet of solar winds. For Elizabeth Congdon, chief engineer of the heat shield on the Parker probe, these adventures as close to the Sun would never have been possible without careful preparation in advance.
The heat shield, for example, is capable of withstanding a temperature of 1,371 degrees Celsius. During its descent as close as possible to the Sun on December 24, NASA expects to reach a surface temperature on the heat shield of 982 degrees Celsius.
This final journey as close as possible to the Sun will also be an opportunity to pay tribute to Eugene Parker, who gave his name to this probe. This extraordinary scientist, who laid the foundations (and more) of heliophysics (the study of the Sun).
