Existing rocket technology can’t achieve this effect, so engineers must take Parker past Venus seven times throughout the mission, so that the spacecraft can use that planet’s gravity as a brake. But a spacecraft bound for the center of the solar system would need to slow itself down instead, so that its orbit shrinks instead of widens, and it can start moving closer to the sun. A spacecraft bound for Jupiter, for example, can use that momentum to fly faster. Earth travels around the sun at great speeds. Reaching the sun is, remarkably, more difficult than reaching the outer planets, or leaving the solar system altogether. Getting there at all took a bit of work too. The spacecraft, built by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, is designed to withstand the extremes of flying so close to our wonderful, scorching ball of nuclear fusion and dipping into its atmosphere, for a few hours, at least, to swim through sizzling matter. The Parker spacecraft left Earth in 2018, and is traveling on a long loop around our star, making periodic visits. ![]() So touch, shmuch: Parker certainly has, to use a less scientific term, booped the sun. But even that isn’t a distinct, solid surface like the ground on Earth, hence the quotation marks. The spacecraft can’t reach down to the photosphere, the layer that radiates light, what’s commonly understood to be the “surface” of the sun. NASA then declared that Parker had “touched the sun,” basking in a bit of poetic license. The NASA probe, named Parker, made the historic dive in April of last year, but scientists waited until last month to announce the news, after they’d analyzed the data and made sure that the spacecraft had indeed crossed into the top layer of the sun’s atmosphere, known as the corona. “We’ve touched plasma and gas that actually belongs to the sun.” “This is a totally cool place to go-well, I guess, hot place to go,” Korreck, a solar physicist at NASA, told me. For the first time in history, a spacecraft had entered the sun’s atmosphere. But Korreck and her team had dispatched a mission for that exact purpose, and their plan worked. No machine had ever crossed that mysterious boundary before. SCIENTISTS ARE MONITORING A NEW OMICRON SUBVARIANT CALLED BA.Kelly Korreck is still thinking about the time her spacecraft flew into the sun, how one moment, the probe was rushing through a stormy current of fast-moving particles, and the next, it was plunging somewhere quieter, where the plasma rolled like ocean waves. ABBOTT INTRODUCES NEW ‘PARENTAL BILL OF RIGHTS’ Tracking the sun’s cycles can protect radio communications on Earth and keep NASA satellites and astronauts safe. ![]() Some extreme eruptions can even affect electricity grids on Earth. That can affected Earth by causing lights in the sky, called aurora, or upset radio communications. Solar cycle 25 began in 2020 and is scheduled to peak in July 2025.Įvery 11 years the sun’s magnetic fields completely flip, and as a result giant eruptions on the sun, like solar flares and coronal mass ejections, occur. The sun’s weather follows an 11-year activity cycle, and this week’s CME is part of solar cycle 25, the sun’s current activity phase. The CME nearing Earth this week is considered a “halo CME,” one that appears larger than the sun in coronagraph images as the solar particles approach Earth, giving it a circular halo effect. ![]() These types of solar storms do not interfere with power grids or satellites. It’s considered a “low hazard” geomagnetic storm, but could spark hours of auroras from the Arctic Circle into the northern U.S., as far south as New York.Īmerica is changing faster than ever! Add Changing America to your Facebook or Twitter feed to stay on top of the news. Larger CMEs can reach a size comparable to a quarter of the space between Earth and the sun by the time it reaches our planet.Īccording to, solar particles from a CME will hit Earth starting Wednesday, and that means parts of the planet could possibly experience a G-2 class geomagnetic storm. Slower CMEs can take several days to arrive, while they expand in size as they propagate away from the sun. CMEs are capable of ejecting billions of tons of coronal material and travel outward from the sun at speeds ranging from slower than 250 kilometers per second to as fast as 3,000 km/s. Known as a coronal mass ejection (CME), the solar phenomenon is a large expulsion of plasma and magnetic field stemming from the sun’s corona.
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