![]() ![]() That point is known as the Alfvén critical surface, and marks the end of the solar atmosphere and the beginning of the solar wind, which drags the magnetic field of the Sun with it as it sails across the solar system. The continued heating pushes this plasma away from the Sun, and at some point the gravity and magnetic fields are too weak to contain it. The ecliptic is the plane created by the yearly orbit of the Earth around the Sun.īut how does one know that PSP has really flown thru the solar corona? Close to the Sun, the charged particles are bound to the Sun by gravity and magnetic forces. ![]() The animation shows the PSP trajectory from within the ecliptic as seen from Earth. the closest distance to the Sun during PSP's orbit around our star) are gradually lowered: from 24.8 million km during its first perihelion late 2018 to 11.1 million km in April 2021, and eventually to 6.9 million km from late 2024 onwards, which is less than 10 solar radii! Underneath animation shows the April 2021 perihelion as calculated by STCE scientists, with further descriptions in this STCE newsitem. Through a series of well-calculated flybys of the planet Venus, PSP's orbit is getting altered such that the perihelions (i.e. Its main science goals are to trace the source(s) responsible for heating the corona to its multi-million degrees temperature, to find the acceleration mechanism for the solar wind, and to uncover the physical processes responsible for the accelaration and transport of the solar energetic particles. PSP was launched on 12 August 2018 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The importance of this major step cannot be underestimated, as the corona holds many mysteries such as why it is so hot, or how the solar wind gets accelerated and as such impacts the entire solar system. This major milestone from NASA's Parker Solar Probe (PSP) was announced during the 2021 American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in New Orleans. Over the next years, PSP will make even closer flybys of our star.The article underneath was inspired on the NASA's feature story, with a movie available at YouTube (NASA/GSFC).įor the first time in history, a spacecraft has flown through the Sun's upper atmosphere -the corona- and sampled particles and magnetic fields there. The Parker Solar Probe reached new milestones in 2021, being the first spacecraft to fly through the Sun's corona, and tracing the magnetic switchbacks to their source. ![]()
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