NASA is now about to launch their very innovative mission on 31st July in the year 2018, the mission is to Touch the Sun, however the initial name of the mission is Solar Probe Plus it will now be renamed as the Parker Probe Plus.
The Name will be renamed after the Eugene Parker the astrophysicist of the University of Chicago who discovered the existence of the Solar Wind. Solar Wind is nothing but charged particles that are constantly streaming from our star Sun back in the year 1958. This is the first ever time the mission of NASA will be renamed after the astrophysicist who is yet alive.
Earlier also NASA has named many missions on the name of the researchers and one of the very famous ones were the Hubble Space Telescope, however the Parker Probe Plus will be the first one ever before the death of the 89 year old astrophysicist Eugene Parker.
To this delightful gesture of the NASA the astrophysicist Eugene Parker in an interview at the University of Chicago commented that “I am certainly gratefully honored to be associated with such heroic scientific space mission”.
The Parker Probe Plus is scheduled to launch in the year 2018 and NASA has selected the United Launch Service LLC of Centennial, Colorado who will be providing launch services to the Parker Probe Plus.
The SPP spacecraft will launch aboard a Delta IV Heavy rocket from Space Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The Parker Probe Plus will be launched on 31st July and this 20 day launch period has received a total contract award amount of about 389.1 million dollars.
This Parker Plus Probe will be send directly to the outer surface of the Sun to study the Atmosphere and many other things of the Sun. To accomplish this task the vehicle will be orbiting the Sun about 24 times and even has to certainly go for seven fly bys of the Venus to reach about 3.7 million miles closer to the Sun. This mission will be the first ever mission in which the space craft will be this close to the Sun, it is approximately 8 times more than any other space craft that has been to the space before according to the NASA.
The Parke Probe plus will be analyzing many things and help the scientists to answer the two revolutionary puzzles which they have tried to solve since a really long time –
How the Solar Wind is accelerated? ( Solar Wind is the discovery of astrophysicist Eugene Parker)
Whys is the Sun’s outer surface called the Corona is much more hotter than the Solar Surface( The Temperature is exactly 3 million degrees F, 1.7 million degrees C which is compared with about 10 thousand degrees F and 5,500 degrees C)
These two major issues can be solved only when they reach closer to the surface of the Sun and it is not just because of the academic interest but lately one of the biggest discoveries has triggered this mission.
According to the National Academy of Science the Huge Solar event or one can even say Solar Storm can cause around 2 trillion dollars worth of damage to the United States alone, and there could an Eastern Seaboard of the United States could be done without a power for a year.
The researchers behind this mission significantly reported that the Parker Probe Plus is not only cause of the academic study but to also know more about the Corona and the threatening temperatures, It is mainly to protect the society that is drastically dependent on the technology that is threatening the space weather.
The study of the Solar Wind which is going to carrying the part of the Sun’s magnetic field which also travels to the Earth and slams into our planet’s magnetic field.
However the lucky we have the fields that work more like a barrier and help us to protect us from this solar magnetic field, so for now this is pretty much harmless. But the Sun is now burping this on a frequent basis and gives away extra charged particles which are known as the Coronal mass ejection.
Excess of these particles when reach the Earth’s magnetic field can and may lead to geometric storms, these geometric storms though are not life threatening ones however can lead to the damage of power grids and communication systems. Not only can this but they even damage the satellites.
The scientists know about the Solar Wind but they do not know the process behind the particle burst of it. And to solve this mystery of the Solar Wind, the Parker Probe Plus will help us to figure out. The space craft designed in this mission help us to trace the energy, which is solely responsible for heating the Corona of the Sun and accelerating the Sun.
The more we know about these matches the more can we predict about the temperature and future conditions and the effect it will have on Human life on Earth. And now the Space Agency has decided to change their protocols and rename the Solar Probe Plus to the Parker Probe Plus as this time Parker the astrophysicist of the University of Chicago has been very instrumental for the space craft’s mission.
The astrophysicists have helped a lot as his discovery of the Solar Wind has essentially changed our understanding of our stars and how the interaction between them takes place. Not only the name of the astrophysicist will be included in the mission but it will also be adding a chip with the pictures of the Eugene Parker on the vehicle and it will be also on the copy of original paper on Solar Wind.
This mission of the NASA is revolutionary and it will be named after the astrophysicist after the launch which will be on 31st July 2018.