NASA breaks solar system speed record with Parker Solar Probe

An illustration of NASA’s
Parker Solar Probe flying past the sun.

NASA’s Goddard
Space Flight Center

• NASA launched its $1.5 billion Parker Solar Probe mission
  toward the sun in August.
• The spacecraft is scheduled to “touch” the sun on Monday night during the first of 24
  flybys.
• NASA‘s probe will reach a
  speed of 213,200 mph while flying through 3.6-million-degree
  solar plasma.
• A heat shield protects the probe, but these conditions won’t
  be the fastest or hottest the spacecraft will experience.

NASA’s
Parker Solar Probe just smashed the record for fastest
human-made object — but it’s just getting started on a series of
feats that defy comprehension.

On Monday night around 10:28 p.m. ET, the probe should fly around
the sun while traveling at a speed of about 213,200 mph. That’s
far faster than the prior speed record held by
NASA’s Juno
spacecraft, which zooms past the cloud tops of Jupiter at
130,000 mph once every two months.

While the car-size Parker Solar Probe is breaking the speed
record, it’s also surviving some of the solar system’s harshest
conditions. Right now, it’s screaming through the diffuse outer
atmosphere of the sun, which is about 3.6 million degrees
Fahrenheit.

NASA
launched the robot in August aboard a powerful rocket — the
start of a seven-year, $1.5 billion mission to decrypt some of
the sun’s
greatest mysteries.

The Parker Solar Probe is expected to easily survive its first
solar flyby, though operators won’t know until later this week
whether anything went wrong.

“For several days around the November 5 perihelion, Parker Solar
Probe will be completely out of contact with Earth because of
interference from the sun’s overwhelming radio emissions,” the
space agency said in a press release.

This orbit will bring the spacecraft within about 15 million
miles of the sun’s surface. That’s about six times as close as
Earth is to the sun. However, this perihelion — the term for the
closest point to the sun during a given orbit — is only the first
of the Parker probe’s 24 death-defying solar encounters.

What’s in store for the Parker Solar Probe

The
orbital path that NASA’s Parker Solar Probe will have to fly to
“touch” the sun.

Johns
Hopkins University Applied Physics
Laboratory

Over the next seven years, each of the robot’s orbits will get
closer and closer to the sun. During each of these passes, its
speed relative to the star will increase, as will the hellish
conditions it must survive.

The Parker Solar Probe’s perihelion in December 2024 (about 21
orbits from now) will accelerate it to nearly 430,000 mph and get
it within 4 million miles of the sun. That’s close enough to
study the star’s mysterious
atmosphere, solar wind, and other properties.

The mission is to crack two 60-year-old mysteries: why the sun
has a solar wind, and how the corona — the star’s outer
atmosphere — can heat up to millions of degrees. That’s about 100
times hotter than the sun’s surface, which has a temperature of
about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

“That defies the laws of nature. It’s like water rolling uphill,”
Nicola Fox, a solar physicist at the Johns Hopkins University
Applied Physics Laboratory, said during a NASA press briefing in
2017. “Until you actually go there and touch the sun, you can’t
answer these questions.”

Both the solar wind and corona are key to understanding solar
storms, which can
overwhelm electrical grids on Earth, harm our satellites,

disrupt electronics, and possibly lead to
trillions of dollars‘ worth of damage. Data collected by the
probe’s sensors might help space-weather forecasters better
predict potentially devastating, violent solar outbursts.

The probe’s maximum expected speed translates to nearly 120 miles
per second. This is fast enough to fly from New York to Tokyo in
less than a minute, and 3.3 times as fast as the Juno
spacecraft.

To achieve this feat, the probe has to zoom past planet Venus
seven times; each flyby helps the robot correct its orbit to slip
closer to the sun and boost its speed. On September 25, during
its first Venus flyby, the probe turned back toward Earth and
took the photograph below.

Our planet is the bright dot at the top-right of the picture.

A
photo of Earth taken by NASA’s Parker Solar Probe near Venus on
September 25, 2018.

NASA/Naval
Research Laboratory/Parker Solar Probe

How to fly through hell and back

For now, the searing-hot plasma that the plucky solar probe is
withstanding is so diffuse that “it doesn’t influence the
temperature of the spacecraft,” NASA said.

The
heat shield of NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is craned into place
atop the spacecraft on June 27, 2018.

NASA

But the space agency added that the spacecraft’s high-tech heat
shield is the reason its temperature is so stable.

The shield, called the Thermal Protection System, always faces
the sun and blocks its light. It also protects the probe and its
sensors from a solar wind of charged, high-energy particles that
can mess with electronics.

The 8-foot-wide shield is made of 4.5 inches of carbon foam
that’s sandwiched between two sheets of carbon composites. That
allows it to absorb and deflect solar energy that might otherwise
fry the probe. A water cooling system will also help prevent the
spacecraft’s solar panels from roasting and keep the Parker probe
at 85 degrees Fahrenheit.

Already, the surface of the heat shield has reached a temperature
of about 820 degrees Fahrenheit. And it’s only expected to get
hotter as the probe continues its mission.

During the most harrowing segment of its journey, NASA’s probe
must withstand sunlight 3,000 times stronger than occurs at
Earth.

NASA’s
Parker Solar Probe must withstand blistering temperatures and
incredible speeds near the sun.
David
McNew/Getty Images; NASA; JHUAPL; Jenny Cheng/Business
Insider

Outside the spacecraft, in the outer fringes of the sun’s corona
or atmosphere, temperatures may reach 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit.
(If steel was heated to this temperature, the metal would melt into a liquid.)

The probe’s mission will continue for about seven years, or until
it runs out of the propellant necessary to keep the heat shield
pointed at the sun.

When that happens, the star’s blistering heat will burn up “90%
of the spacecraft,” science writer Shannon Stirone said on Twitter — but not the
heat shield itself.

“The heat shield will then orbit the sun for millions of years,”
she said.