NASA plans on ‘touching the Sun’

NASA will soon make history through its first ever mission to “touch the Sun”.

NASA plans on initiating a probe which will dip into the Sun’s atmosphere. Unlike the previous probe ‘Helios 2’, the Solar Probe Plus (SPP) mission would have to survive extreme temperatures and radiations. However, the information obtained during the whole course would prove to be beneficial for astronomers for predicting solar storms and also presenting evidences regarding few deepest mysteries that surround our closest star.

Back in 1976, a 370 kg block of instruments named Helios 2 was able to come within almost 43 km of the Sun’s surface. NASA now aims to get closer with the Sun’s corona than Helios 2.

NASA intends to officially announce its plans by Wednesday. Expected to be launched by August 2018, the probe will swing past Venus seven times for over a period of seven years in order to fine-tune an orbit which will take it within 6 million km of the Sun’s surface (photosphere) in 24 elliptical loops, informed Science Alert.

At nine times the Sun’s radius, though not being really close, the move is still daring enough to permit the sensors to be close enough to detect the magnetic fields and get hold of some solar particles without being fried. The probe will be enforced to undergo temperatures up to 1400°C high.

Brad Tucker from the Australian National University's Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics explained, “The biggest leap in technology of this mission is the heat shield. The heat shield is an 11.5-centimetre-thick carbon composite shield, which can withstand temperatures of nearly 1,400 degrees Celsius. The use of carbon composite is really allowing us to do much more complicated things.”

Apart from the imaging system for taking pictures, the SPP mission that will cost around US $1.5bn will make use of active water circulation system for protecting the instruments required to calculate the corona’s magnetic and electric fields along with plasma density and electron temperatures.

Independent quoted NASA stating, “Placed in orbit within four million miles of the sun’s surface, and facing heat and radiation unlike any spacecraft in history, the spacecraft will explore the sun’s outer atmosphere and make critical observations that will answer decades-old questions about the physics of how stars work. The resulting data will improve forecasts of major space weather events that impact life on Earth, as well as satellites and astronauts in space.”