And my name and my daughters name and my sons name are on board the probe, on a chip. I recall on Insight too, on Mars. 

 

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2021/nasa-enters-the-solar-atmosphere-for-the-first-time-bringing-new-discoveries

 

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For the first time in history, a spacecraft has touched the Sun. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has now flown through the Sun’s upper atmosphere – the corona – and sampled particles and magnetic fields there. 

The new milestone marks one major step for Parker Solar Probe and one giant leap for solar science. Just as landing on the Moon allowed scientists to understand how it was formed, touching the very stuff the Sun is made of will help scientists uncover critical information about our closest star and its influence on the solar system. 

 

Edited December 17, 20214 yr by martin-w

Amazing video as the Probe flies through the suns corona.

 

 

 

Edited December 18, 20214 yr by martin-w

21 hours ago, martin-w said:

Amazing video as the Probe flies through the suns corona.

That is amazing. I just googled the corona temp and it’s estimated at 2,000,000 degrees. How they kept from burning up and the camera operating at that temp, I’d like to know.

Its got a heat shield. 

 

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So, why won’t it melt?

Parker Solar Probe has been designed to withstand the extreme conditions and temperature fluctuations for the mission. The key lies in its custom heat shield and an autonomous system that helps protect the mission from the Sun’s intense light emission, but does allow the coronal material to “touch” the spacecraft.

 

 

 

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The Science Behind Why It Won’t Melt

One key to understanding what keeps the spacecraft and its instruments safe, is understanding the concept of heat versus temperature. Counterintuitively, high temperatures do not always translate to actually heating another object.

In space, the temperature can be thousands of degrees without providing significant heat to a given object or feeling hot. Why? Temperature measures how fast particles are moving, whereas heat measures the total amount of energy that they transfer. Particles may be moving fast (high temperature), but if there are very few of them, they won’t transfer much energy (low heat). Since space is mostly empty, there are very few particles that can transfer energy to the spacecraft.

The corona through which Parker Solar Probe flies, for example, has an extremely high temperature but very low density. Think of the difference between putting your hand in a hot oven versus putting it in a pot of boiling water (don’t try this at home!) — in the oven, your hand can withstand significantly hotter temperatures for longer than in the water where it has to interact with many more particles. Similarly, compared to the visible surface of the Sun, the corona is less dense, so the spacecraft interacts with fewer hot particles and doesn’t receive as much heat.

That means that while Parker Solar Probe will be traveling through a space with temperatures of several million degrees, the surface of the heat shield that faces the Sun will only get heated to about 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit (about 1,400 degrees Celsius).