Parker Solar Probe – Scienceandsf -A Blog Published by Robert A. Lawler

Scientists have three new instruments which will enable them to observe the Sun in greater detail than ever before.

Our Sun plays such an important role in our very existence that the study of this single celestial object is a separate branch of astronomy unto itself. In ancient times the positions on the horizon where the Sun rose and set each day of the year were carefully plotted and recorded, as were the patterns of Solar eclipses. It is thought that some of the world’s ancient monuments, like Stonehenge and Maya temples, were used as primitive Solar observatories.

When viewed from the center of Stonehenge the Sun rises directly behind the Heel Stone on the summer solstice. (Credit: Earthsky)

The Sun was one of the first objects that Galileo turned his early telescope towards, discovering sunspots in the process. Ever since then scientists have kept an almost daily record of those dark spots on the Sun’s face. Every time a new kind of scientific instrument was invented it usually wasn’t long before that instrument would be turned on the Sun. In fact the element helium was discovered when the newly invented spectrograph was used to study the light from the Sun.

Using his newly invented telescope Galileo was the first person to observe and record sunspots. (Credit: The Galileo Project)

Spectral Lines in the light coming from the Sum allows astronomers to determine the chemical composition of the Sun. (Credit: FlatEarth Debunkers)

Now Solar astronomers have three powerful new instruments with which to probe the star at the center of our Solar System. One of these is NASA’s Parker Solar probe which I’ve written about several times now, see posts of 7June2017, 6January2018, 5September2018, 3November 2018 and 18December2019. So here I will only give a brief update to the spacecraft’s mission.

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is already the closest man made object to the Sun but over the next few years it is going to get even closer. (Credit: University of Arizona)

After a flyby of the planet Venus back in December 2019, Parker used the tug of Venus’ gravity to put it on an orbit that sent it even closer to the Sun. The closest approach by Parker, breaking its own previous record from just last year, occurred on January 29th 2020 at a distance of only 18.6 million kilometers. That distance is only about 12% of Earth’s distance from the Sun which means that the sunlight hitting Parker was more than 60 times as strong it ever gets here on our planet.

And in order to get so close to the Sun and its gravity Parker has to be moving very fast, faster than any object ever built by mankind, again breaking its own record. The probe’s speed on the 29th hit a maximum of 393,044 km/h, fast enough to go from the Earth to the Moon in only one hour!

The scientists are still processing the data obtained by Parker on this close flyby so we will have to wait to hear if any new discoveries were made. Over the next four years Parker is scheduled to get even closer to the Sun, eventually getting as close as 6.9 million kilometers.

The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST) on the other hand isn’t going to be making any close approaches to the Sun; it’s permanently installed on the top of the Haleakalā volcano in Hawaii. However the new Solar telescope, with a main mirror of about four meters in diameter, is now giving astronomers the highest resolution, highest definition images of the Sun’s surface ever. See images below.

The Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope. (Credit: Maui Now)

Closest ever view of the surface of our Sun, as provided by DKIST. (Credit: Devdiscourse)

The kernel shaped objects that you see in the image are fountains or geysers of hot gas upwelling from deep beneath the surface of the Sun. Each of those geysers by the way, is about the size of the state of Texas! These initial images are already telling astronomers a great deal about how the Sun’s energy gets from it’s core where fusion occurs to the photosphere, the part of the Sun that we see.

In the next few months additional instruments are to be incorporated into DKIST that it is hoped will enable it to study the magnetic fields around sunspots, revealing some of the secrets of those mysterious objects. In any case the DKIST telescope has many more years of useful work ahead of it so at the moment we can only guess at what discoveries it will make.

And there is one more Solar instrument that will soon be adding to what we know about our home star. The European Space Agency’s Solar Orbiter has just been launched last night, the 9th of February and is beginning a 7 year mission to study the Sun. The planned orbit for the spacecraft will not take it as close to the Sun as the Parker probe however, closest approach distance for Solar Orbiter will be about 45 million kilometers. However it is planned for the probe to be placed into an orbit that will carry it 35º above the plane of the ecliptic, giving scientists their first clear, close up look at the Sun’s poles. This is important because many of our theories about the Sun’s 11 year sunspot cycle make predictions about conditions near the Sun’s poles that so far we’ve been unable to check because from our viewpoint the poles are at a very slanted angle, making it difficult to observe any of their details.

The Solar Orbiter space probe isn’t going to get as close to the Sun as Parker will, but it’s going to get our first good view of the Sun’s polar regions. (Credit: NASA)

The Launch of Solar Orbiter. The probe has a two year journey to reach its proper orbit before its seven year mission. (Credit: Spaceflight Now)

Together these three instruments may inaugurate a new era in the study of our Sun. Over the next decade the wonders that could be discovered…well I guess we’ll just have to wait and see won’t we.

NSA releases the first results from the Parker Solar Probe.

Without our Sun life here on Earth would be impossible, we all know that. The Sun’s light not only keeps our planet warm but through the process of photosynthesis generates the food we need to survive. Recognizing this importance for centuries now scientists have examined the Sun with every instrument in their possession. However the very energy that the Sun produces can make it difficult to study. After all, if you get too close you could suffer the same fate as Icarus.

Right now our Sun is going through Solar minimum in its 11 year sunspot cycle. We have had 271 days with NO observable sunspots so far this year. (Credit: Spaceweather.com)

NASA’s Parker Solar probe is the space agency’s latest attempt to get up close and personal with our parent star. Launched back on August 12th of 2018, see my posts of 7 June 2017, 5 September 2018 and 3 November 2018, Parker is designed with a special ‘heat shield’ to protect its delicate instruments from being destroyed by the Sun’s heat. Nevertheless even Parker cannot remain too near the Sun for too long. Instead the probe has been placed in a highly elliptical orbit that takes it in as close as 24 million kilometers to the Sun before sending it back out to 100 million kilometers, a distance that will allow the that heat shield a chance to cool off.

The Parker Solar probe nearly completion. The heat reflector / shield at the top protects the delicate instruments beneath from the Sun’s intense radiation. (Credit: Axios.com)

The planned orbital plot for the Parker Solar Probe is the most complex set of maneuvers ever attempted for a spacecraft. (Credit: Sky and Telescope)

At its closest approach Parker actually flies within the Sun’s atmosphere, the corona, that glow around the Sun that can only be seen during a total eclipse. The question of why the corona is so hot, over a million degrees Kelvin, while the Sun’s surface is relatively cool, about 6,000 Kelvin, is one of the mysteries that Parker was built to study.

A picture I took of the solar eclipse back in August of 2017. At totality the Sun’s corona becomes visible. (Credit: R. A. Lawler)

Learning more about the how the Sun generates the Solar wind, the steam of high-energy particles that among other thing causes auroras here on Earth, is another of the Parker Probe’s main missions. That particular mission is only appropriate since the spacecraft is named for Eugene Parker; the astrophysicist who back in the late 1950s first predicted the existence of the Solar wind. In fact Parker is the first NASA spacecraft to be named for a living scientist, a measure of the respect with which Eugene Parker is held in the space community.

Eugene Parker describing the Solar wind that he predicted. (Credit: CNN.com)

So far the Parker Solar probe has completed three of its planned 24 close passes and now NASA has released the first data dump of measurements taken by the probe. In a series of papers presented at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union on December 11th NASA scientists revealed new discoveries about how the Sun generates the Solar wind along with how the magnetic fields within the corona switch polarities on a period ranging from a few seconds to a few minutes.

The papers also detail how the density of dust particles in the atmosphere actually goes down as you get closer to the Sun. This phenomenon is probably due to the pressure of the light and sub-atomic particles being ejected by the Sun and of which the Solar wind is formed. During its most recent close approach back in November Parker was actually able to observe the effect of a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) on the Solar wind revealing how a CME acts as a ‘snowplow’ pushing the wind ahead of it with increased energy.

A Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). (Credit: Flickr)

And the Parker probe’s mission is only beginning; NASA is planning on another 21 close approaches to the Sun. In fact just next month Parker is scheduled to use a gravity assist from the planet Venus which will send it on an orbit that takes it even closer to the Sun. Eventually the space probe is expected to come within a mere 6.16 million kilometers of the Sun and to reach speeds of 690,000 kilometers per hour, a wild ride indeed.

The Parker Solar probe’s mission is scheduled to last through 2025, who knows what secrets it will learn in that time about the star that is the very center of our Solar system.

Space News for November 2018.

This month we’ll talk about four of NASA’s interplanetary probes. We’ll say goodbye to two of the probes as they run out of fuel and scientists here on Earth lose the ability to control them. Another two probes however, are just beginning their work of exploration and hopefully in the next few years we’ll be taking more about the discoveries they’ve made.

We’ll start with the Kepler space telescope, see image below and check out my post of 28April2018. Launched back in March of 2009 the mission of Kepler was to continuously observe hundreds of thousands of stars searching for small, rhythmic changes in their brightness that could be caused by planets passing in front of them.

The Kepler Space Telescope (Credit: NASA)

During its eleven years of service Kepler observed over half a million stars and is credited with the preliminary detection of 2,662 planets outside of our solar system. Kepler was only designed to detect such exo-planets as they’re called, larger, more precise Earth based telescopes would then carry on the work of learning about these alien worlds.

In order to avoid having the Earth interfere in its observations Kepler was placed into an orbit around the Sun known as an Earth trailing orbit some 130 million kilometers from Earth. Without fuel to maintain its proper orbit and orientation Kepler would be unable to perform its mission.

That fuel has now run out and on October 30 of 2018 NASA announced officially that communication with the Kepler space telescope has been lost and the mission has ended. Still, thanks to the Kepler space telescope astronomers now have 2,662 completely unknown worlds to study!

Another very important space probe has suffered the same fate. The Dawn mission to the two largest objects in the asteroid belt was both the first interplanetary vehicle to orbit two different bodies, not counting Earth, and the first probe to employ an ion rocket as its main propulsion.

The Dawn spacecraft first traveled to the asteroid Vesta, the second largest but heaviest asteroid. Astronomers believed that Vesta was composed primarily of iron and nickel and might have become of core of a planet had not the enormous gravity of the planet Jupiter kept that planet from ever forming. Vesta did indeed turn out to be a very heavy, metal rich asteroid proving the astronomers correct.

After orbiting Vesta for more than a year and completing its survey the Dawn probe then did something no other probe had ever done. It fired up its ion engines again, left obit around Vesta and traveled to the asteroid Ceres, the largest of the asteroids. The image below shows the Dawn Spacecraft with Vesta, upper right, and Ceres, lower middle.

Dawn with Vesta and Ceres (Credit: SoSialPolitik)

Now ion rockets don’t give you a lot of push, but they give a small push for a very long time. Whereas chemical rockets can use up all of their fuel within minutes an ion rocket can keep firing for years. Dawn was the first interplanetary probe to make full use of all the extra push possible from an ion rocket firing its engines for more than 50,000 hours.

So Dawn became the first probe to orbit and study two different bodies in our solar system orbiting Ceres and Vesta more than 3,000 times.

Like Kepler however even Dawn’s ion rockets eventually used up the last of their fuel and the Dawn spacecraft can no longer keep solar panels pointed toward the Sun, its antenna pointed toward Earth. According to NASA Dawn missed its regular radio check in on both 31October and 1Nov and the mission is presumed to have ended.

Once again however the Dawn probe has provided astronomers with a wealth of data to analyze. Dawn isn’t finished making discoveries.

The end of two of its premier missions however doesn’t mean that NASA is running out of space probes, far from it. Two probes launched over the past two years are approaching their targets and the data should soon start pouring in!

The OSIRIS-Rex probe has been traveling for the past two years toward a rendezvous with the small near Earth asteroid Bennu (See my post of 6January2018). OSIRIS-Rex should reach its destination within a month and recently took a high-resolution image of its target, see image below. Once at Bennu, which is too small to actually orbit, the OSIRIS-Rex will land and collect a sample of the asteroid’s surface to return to Earth. The sample is expected to arrive back here on Earth in 2023 but with all of the probe’s other instruments there’s no doubt that we’ll be learning a lot about Bennu much sooner than that!

Latest Image (3Nov) of Asteroid Bennu taken by OSIRIS-Rex (Credit: Astronomy Magazine)

Another NASA spacecraft that is well on its way to its target is the Parker Solar Probe which just this past week on 29October became the closest man made object to our Sun (See my posts of 7June2017, 6January2018 and 5September2018). At the distance of 42.73 million kilometers Parker broke the record previously held by the joint German-American Helios-2 probe.

The Parker probe is going to get much closer however. During its six year mission to study the Sun Parker is expected to come as close as 6.9 million kilometers. The Parker probe will study the Sun in an effort to learn more about how the energy the Sun produces by hydrogen fusion in its core moves upward to the Sun’s surface. Parker will also study how the Sun generates its powerful magnetic field. The image below shows the planned trajectory of the Parker probe. Presently the spacecraft is just past ‘First Perihelion’.

Planned Trajectory of Parker Solar Probe (Credit: JPL, NASA)

If you’d like to learn more about any of the four interplanetary probes we’ve talked about click on one of the links below to be taken to the official NASA site for that mission!

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/main/index.html

https://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/

https://www.nasa.gov/osiris-rex

https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/parker-solar-probe

Space Weather

So far this year has turned out to be a pretty mild one as far as Space Weather is concerned. What’s Space Weather, you ask? Isn’t space a vacuum and you can’t have weather is a vacuum, can you?

It is certainly true that the density of matter in the space between Earth, the Moon and the other planets is usually less than ten atoms per cubic centimeter, that’s less than one billionth billionth of air density at sea level! Not only is the density extremely low but the matter that is out there is usually in the form of elementary particles, protons and electrons rather than stable atoms. How could such nothing have anything that could be called weather?

Well it turns out that while there may not be very much out there, what there is has a lot of energy in it. In fact those few protons and electrons go speeding through the Solar system at more than 10,000 times the wind speed of a hurricane! And since those particles have electric charge at that speed they can generate some pretty powerful voltages and magnetic fields.

As you might guess space weather is almost totally dominated by the Sun with more than a million tons of material evaporating away from the Sun’s surface every second. Known as the Solar Wind this flow of particles was first predicted in 1957 by the astrophysicist Eugene Parker, for whom NASA’s new Parker Solar Probe is named.

Eugene Parker Explaining the Solar Wind (Credit: New York Times)

It is the Solar Wind that is responsible for both the Aurora and the belts of radiation that circle the Earth known as the Van Allen belts. Further out in space it is the Solar Wind that generates the tails of comets and which keeps those tails pointing away from the Sun.

Space Weather is Caused by the Sun (Credit: NOAA)

The power of the Solar Wind varies with the Sun’s approximately eleven-year sunspot cycle and right now the Sun has been quite quiet. During periods of intense sunspot activity however the Solar Wind becomes not only more powerful but more erratic, with massive explosions on the Sun’s surface called Solar flairs blasting out millions of tons of material generating events known as Coronal Mass Ejections or CMEs.

Although it went unrecognized at the time, the first detection of a CME striking the Earth occurred in early September in 1859! On the first of September that year British astronomer Richard Carrington noticed a bright spot on the Sun, a Solar flair. The next night, the night of the second a huge auroral display was seen over much of northern hemisphere, even as far south as Panama. At the same time the brand new U.S. telegraph system experienced unexplained electrifications with operators being shocked and telegraph paper being set on fire.

A similar strike by a CME today would destroy most of the satellites we have in orbit and lead to massive electrical blackouts here on Earth. In fact a magnetic storm from the Sun in March of 1989 is credited with causing a total blackout of the Hydro-Quebec power grid in Canada. Also, the effect that so much radiation might have on astronauts out in space is still unknown but is expected to be a serious health risk.

These days NASA and other space and scientific agencies keep a constant watch on the Sun using satellites such as the joint NASA-ESA Solar Heliospheric (SOHO) and the Solar-Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft. To these satellites will soon be added the Parker Solar Probe, a spacecraft that will travel closer to the Sun than any other man-made device ever has. A daily report for space weather is now being issued to provide warnings for satellite operators, communications corporations as well as power grid utilities.

The SOHO Satellite and an image it took of a Solar Flair (Credit: NASA)

Many scientists and engineers are presently working to develop technologies to protect our electronic infrastructure against the ravages of extreme Space Weather; I know quite a few of them in fact. But the next solar storm could strike at almost any time and there’s a great deal of work to be done. If you’d like to visit NOAA’s website for the daily space weather report click on the link below. (It’s a really cool site!)

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/

A hundred years ago Space Weather was completely unknown and almost impossible to detect. As our modern societies grow ever more dependent on electronics however the destructive potential of Space Weather is one more way that outer space is now becoming a place that we need to pay close attention to.

The Coming Year in Space: New launch Vehicles, New Inter-Planetary Probes and maybe America’s return to Manned Spaceflight.

A new year always brings in with it the hope for a year full of new and exciting advances and in space the year 2018 could very well fulfill much of that promise. Not only do NASA and America’s commercial space companies have a long to-do list but also the European Space Agency (ESA), the Chinese, Japanese and India all plan ambitious space ventures.

Let’s begin with the possibility of manned space flight returning to American soil as the private companies Space X and Boeing are scheduled to make unmanned test launches of their new crew capable space capsules. Space X is currently scheduled to test launch their Dragon capsule around March while Boeing’s Starliner capsule is scheduled to launch around July. Depending on the success of these unmanned test flights, manned flights could begin before the end on the year. The images below show the Dragon and Starliner capsules.

Dragon (right) and Starliner Capsules (Credit: Robert Fisher, America Space)

Meanwhile Space X also intends to perform the first test launch of its new Falcon Heavy launch vehicle this very month. When successfully launched the Falcon Heavy will become the most powerful rocket in operation anywhere in the World. Also, since the Falcon Heavy is designed to be reusable like its little brother the Falcon 9 it will also help to bring down the cost of getting into space. The image below shows the Falcon Heavy on its launch pad being prepared for its test flight.

Falcon Heavy on the Launch Pad (Credit: Derrick Stamos)

As far as NASA itself is concerned its main emphasis in 2018 will be on inter-planetary probes like the InSight Mars lander (short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport), which will be launched in May and is expected to reveal many of the details of the interior structure of Mars. Another probe scheduled for a July launch will be the Parker Solar Probe which will come closer to the Sun than any previous spacecraft and actually become the first to enter and study the Sun’s atmosphere or Corona. Also in August of this year the OSIRIS-Rex space probe (which was launched on 8Sept2016) will reach its destination of the asteroid Bennu to begin a three-year mission that will include collecting a sample of the asteroid for return to Earth. The images below show the InSight, Parker Solar and OSIRIS-Rex space probes.

The space agencies of the rest of the World have an equally busy schedule with the ESA launching its BepiColombo spacecraft on a seven-year voyage to the planet Mercury, arriving in 2024, see image below. Meanwhile Japan’s JAXA space agency is anticipating the rendezvous of its Hayabusa 2 probe with the asteroid Ryugu in June. This mission also includes a sample return with the sample arriving on Earth in 2020.

Bepi-Colombo Mercury Probe (Credit: ESA, Airbus)

On the other hand China and India have both set their sights on exploring the Moon with China’s Chang’e 5 attempting the first ever landing on our satellite’s dark side. The Chang’e 5 is also a sample return mission so we may learn a great deal about that relatively little know side of our nearest neighbor.

India’s Chandrayaan 2 vehicle, scheduled for a March launch, is a combination of an orbiter and lander with a lander also carrying a small rover down to the lunar surface. Once on the surface the rover’s instruments will study the lunar soil.

Now remember, these are the scheduled space events. You never know, there could be important discoveries by the Juno spacecraft now orbiting Jupiter or the Kepler exo-planet hunting telescope. All in all 2018 looks to be an exciting year.

Space News for June 2017

It seems as if every time I decide to write an update on new events happening in our exploration of space SpaceX corporation has to get a mention. Every month it seems like Elon Musk and his engineers are achieving some new goal toward increasing humanity’s access to outer space.

First Reused Dragon Capsule Docking at ISS (Credit NASA)

This month SpaceX has not only launched its 11th resupply mission to the International Space Station. Not only successfully landed the rocket’s first stage for the 11th time. But the pressurized Dragon capsule that was launched and is now docked at the ISS is itself a reused capsule from SpaceX’s fourth resupply mission back in 2014. This means that only the rocket’s second stage was lost in the mission, a degree of reuse not achieved since the Space Shuttle. Progress, progress.

The nation of India has also achieved a milestone in the past week with the first launch of its new heavy GSLV Mark III rocket, see picture below. The GLSV Mark III is the Asian nation’s attempt to catch up to the space big shots in the growing space industry and India even plans on using the rocket to begin manned launches starting in 2024!

India’s New GSLV Mark III Rocket (Credit BBC)

There is also some tantalizing news from NASA’s Curiosity Rover which is still exploring Gale Crater on the Martian surface. Now NASA’s three rovers; Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity have already found a considerable amount of evidence that Mars once possessed large bodies of water that could have supported life 3.1 to 3.8 billion years ago. Recently however Curiosity has been able to show that the lake that once filled Gale Crater had different levels of oxygen at different depths, a type of environment similar to lakes on Earth and providing multiple opportunities for many forms of life.

Sedimentary Rock on Mars in Gale Crater (Credit NASA)

Before you get too excited it is likely that these conditions occurred naturally on Earth and life evolved to fit those conditions but it is still strong evidence that conditions favourable to life existed on Mars some 3 billion years ago.

But to my mind the big news in space exploration is NASA’s announcement of a spacecraft that will be sent much closer to the Sun than any probe has ever gone. The Parker Solar Probe is named for Doctor Eugene Parker who named and studied the solar wind starting in the 1950s. The spacecraft is expected to come as close as 6 million kilometers to the Sun, even dipping inside the Sun’s ‘Atmosphere’ which is called the corona.

Mission Patch for the Parker Solar Probe (Credit NASA)

As a comparison the Earth orbits about 150 million kilometers from the Sun and even Mercury, the nearest planet maintains a distance of 60 million kilometers. That means Parker will come ten times closer to the Sun than boiling hot Mercury!

Getting so close to the Sun means that the Parker Solar Probe is going to require special protection for it’s vital instruments and equipment. This is provided by an 11.5cm thick shield made of carbon composite materials. This shield will allow Parker to survive temperatures as high as 1400 degrees Celsius.

The Parker Solar Probe will be launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center between 31July and 19 August of 2018. This timing is especially critical because the probe’s mission includes seven, count’em seven flybys of Venus to use the planet’s gravity to alter the spacecraft’s obit bringing it ever closer to the Sun. Unfortunately that many gravity boosts are going to take seven years to accomplish so this is going to be a long mission.

If you’d like to read more about the Parker Solar Probe, and keep track of the mission as I plan on doing, click on the link below to go to the official NASA site for the mission.

https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/parker-solar-probe

That’s Space news for this month. Till next time.