Touch the Sun: NASA spacecraft to zip past the Sun at 435,000 mph in 2024

NASA's daring Parker Solar Probe is preparing to "touch" the Sun again in late 2024. In this upcoming close encounter, the probe will rapidly soar through the Sun's upper atmosphere, known as the corona. Just as landing on the moon gave scientists significant insights into its origin and geological history, "touching" or carefully analyzing the components that make up the Sun is crucial to understanding our host star and its influence on the whole solar system.

In December 2021, NASA made history by announcing that, for the very first time, a spacecraft had made contact with the Sun by flying through its corona. This momentous achievement represented a significant advancement in solar science, as the probe collected essential data on charged particles and magnetic fields.

According to the the spacecraft is projected to travel through the exceptionally hostile atmosphere around our star in 2024 at an incredible speed of 195 km/s or 435,000 mph. The probe is scheduled to come within 3.9 million miles of the Sun's surface during its flyby in 2024, making it closer than even the planet Mercury.

The Sun's powerful gravitational attraction will assist the probe in reaching this high speed. Spacecraft protected by thick heat shields Launched in 2018, the probe has the goal of making close passes of the Sun. This mission enables direct investigation of solar material, such as charged particles and magnetic fields, offering scientists previously unseen information about the Sun's dynamics.

Parker might easily get significant insights on processes such as solar wind—the outward flow of charged particles from the Sun that influences all planets, including Earth—by circling closer to the solar surface. Other solar missions positioned at greater distances may face limitations in collecting essential insights, as they are situated too far away to observe such details.

The $1.5 billion probe can endure the heat thanks to four inch thick carbon composite shields. This massive heat shield protects the probe and its equipment during perihelion, the point in the probe's orbit closest to the star. , at this juncture, temperatures on the front of the spacecraft may reach around 1,400°C.

Parker's approach involves swift ingress and egress, enabling the acquisition of measurements of the solar environment using a suite of instruments. This specific approach holds the potential to uncover explanations for various enigmatic underlying mechanisms that govern the Sun. Among these mysteries is the phenomenon of superheating in the corona.

The corona experiences what appears to be counter intuitive superheating. While the surface temperature of the Sun at its photosphere is approximately 6,000°C, within the corona, temperatures can soar to a staggering million degrees and beyond..