How This NASA spacecraft Is Solving Key Mysteries Of Sun

This NASA spacecraft Is Solving Key Mysteries Of Sun after almost touching the sun.
As a result of all this heating, the solar atmosphere, also known as the corona, balloons above the sun's surface.
The solar wind (a continuous stream of charged particles emerging from the sun) flows quickly enough to escape the waves at the boundary of this superheating zone.
What scientists really want to know is how high beyond the sun's surface this heating spreads, and they used decades of solar wind measurements from NASA's Wind satellite, which debuted in 1994 and is still operational, to find out.
The superheating zone terminates between 10 and 50 solar radii above the sun's surface, according to scientists.
However, further investigation revealed that the outer edge may be linked to the Alfvén point, the distance above the surface at which solar wind particles leave the sun.
A solar shield protects the spacecraft's systems from the Sun's tremendous heat and radiation.
After plunging itself through the edge of the solar corona back in April, NASA's Parker Solar Probe effectively 'touched' the Sun, becoming the first spacecraft to ever come that close to our host star.
“On April 28, 2021, during its eighth flyby of the Sun, Parker Solar Probe encountered the specific magnetic and particle conditions at 18.8 solar radii (around 8.1 million miles) above the solar surface that told scientists it had crossed the Alfvén critical surface for the first time and finally entered the solar atmosphere.” wrote NASA on their official website page about the probe.
Scientists will be able to learn more about how events on the Sun influence the atmosphere and solar wind if they can figure out where these protrusions match up with solar activity coming from the surface.
As the Parker Solar Probe approached 15 solar radii (about 6.5 million miles) from the Sun's surface, it passed through a structure in the corona known as a pseudo streamer.
Massive structures that rise above the Sun's surface and may be seen from Earth during solar eclipses are known as pseudo streamers.
Parker will continue to spiral closer to the Sun, ultimately reaching a distance of 8.86 solar radii (3.83 million miles) from the surface.
The NASA-European Space Agency mission Ulysses flew over the Sun's poles in the mid-1990s and detected a number of strange S-shaped bends in the magnetic field lines of the solar wind, which detoured charged particles on a zig-zag course as they exited the Sun.
Parker detected switchbacks in the solar wind in the year 2019, at a distance of 34 solar radii from the Sun. This piqued scientists’ curiosity in the characteristics and prompted more inquiries: What were their origins?
Were they created on the Sun's surface, or were they fashioned by a mechanism that twisted magnetic fields in the solar atmosphere?
-------------------------------------
Welcome to Futurephile . We tell you stories about technology, innovation and an interesting future.
We explore futuristic technologies that is moving our humanity towards a better future.
We cover topics including space , electric vehicles, artificial intelligence and many more .

Subscribe & Stay tuned: