It’s Alive: Parker Solar Probe Phones Home After ‘Touching’ the Sun’s Atmosphere

The Parker Solar Probe has completed a historic approach to the Sun, beating the velocity record of an object created by humans.

Safe and sound. On Friday, NASA detected a beacon from the Parker Solar Probe, a simple tone to indicate that it’s in good condition and works normally after touching the Sun’s atmosphere on Dec. 24.

The space agency expects the probe to send over its detailed telemetry data on Jan. 1, but for now we know that it survived its last approach, where its thick heat shield reinforced with carbon fiber reached temperatures of 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit.

A double record. On Christmas Eve, the roughly 1,500-pound probe fly 3.8 million miles above the surface of the Sun. The flight was its closest ever to the star.

Boosted by the gravitational force of Venus, the Parker Solar Probe reached a record velocity of 430,000 miles per hour, flying through the solar corona fast enough to avoid falling into the star.

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What’s it doing there? The Parker Solar Probe is on a mission to locate the origin of solar wind, a continuous stream of material emanating from the Sun that affects the entire solar system. Its existence was proposed by the astrophysicist Eugene Parker in the 1950s.

Parker’s calculations are helping scientists better understand how the material in the solar corona heats up to millions of degrees and why the Sun’s energetic particles sped up until they reach a velocity close to the speed of light.

A difficult journey. Getting close enough to “touch” the Sun wasn’t easy. The Sun has a huge gravitational field, which meant NASA had to combine the power of a rocket like the Delta IV Heavy with multiple gravitational assists from Venus to get the probe close enough.

The other big challenge was the temperature. The Sun’s corona is hotter than we could ever imagine, millions of degrees hot. That meant that NASA had to invest a lot of money in the Parker Solar Probe’s materials. All its electronic wiring is made of niobium and reinforced with sapphire glass.

The Faraday cup, the instrument that measures the flow of ions and electrons of solar wind, is made from titanium, zirconium, and molybdenum. The material has a melting point of 4,260 degrees Fahrenheit.

And as I mentioned earlier, the probe doesn’t heat up at these temperatures because of its heat shield, which is 4.3 inches thick.

Images | NASA

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