Solar Orbiter launches on mission to reveal Sun's secrets
10 February, 2020
The US-European Solar Orbiter probe launched Sunday night from Florida on a voyage to deepen our understanding of sunlight and how it shapes the area weather that impacts technology back on the planet.
The mission, a collaboration between ESA (the European Space Agency) and NASA, successfully blasted faraway from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral at 11:03 pm (0403 GMT Monday) and may last up to nine years and even beyond.
Scientists say the craft is likely to provide unprecedented insights into the Sun's atmosphere, its winds and its magnetic fields, including how it shapes the heliosphere, the vast swath of space that encompasses our bodies.
By journeying out of your ecliptic plane -- the belt of space roughly aligned with the Sun's equator, by which the planets orbit -- it'll find the first-ever images of our star's uncharted polar regions.
Drawing on gravity assists from Earth and Venus, Solar Orbiter will slingshot itself right into a bird's eye view of the Sun's poles.
"I think it had been picture perfect, suddenly you really feel like you're connected to the entire solar system," said Daniel Muller, ESA project scientist, soon after the launch.
"You're here on the planet and you're launching something that will go near the Sun."
"We've one common goal and that's to obtain the good science out of this mission. I think we will succeed," added Holly Gilbert, director of NASA's heliophysics science division.
- Space weather -
Ten state-of-the-art instruments on board will record myriad observations to help scientists unlock clues about what drives solar winds and flares.
These emit billions of highly charged particles that impact the planet earth, producing the spectacular Northern Lights. However they can also disrupt radar systems, radio networks and even, though rarely, render satellites useless.
The major solar storm on record hit THE UNITED STATES in September 1859, knocking out a lot of the continent's telegraph network and bathing the skies in an aurora viewable as a long way away as the Caribbean.
"Society increasingly depends on what goes on in space, and for that reason we're more reliant on what the Sun does," said Etienne Pariat, a researcher at the CNRS observatory in Paris.
"Imagine if just half of our satellites were destroyed," added Matthieu Berthomier, a researcher at the Paris-based Plasma Physics Laboratory. "It could be a tragedy for mankind."
- Titanium heat shield -
The probe's closest approach should come every half a year, when Solar Orbiter will be nearer to sunlight than Mercury, only 42 million kilometers (26 million miles) away.
With a custom-designed titanium heat shield, it is made to withstand temperatures as high as 500 Celsius (930 Fahrenheit). Its heat-resistant structure is coated in a thin, black layer of calcium phosphate, a charcoal-like powder that's similar to pigments found in prehistoric cave paintings.
The shield will protect the instruments from extreme particle radiation emitted from solar explosions.
All but among the spacecraft's telescopes will peep out through holes in heat shield that open and close in a carefully orchestrated dance, while other instruments will continue to work behind the shadow of the shield.
Exactly like Earth, the Sun's poles are extreme regions quite not the same as all of those other body. It really is covered in coronal holes, cooler stretches where fast-gushing solar wind originates.
Scientists believe this region could possibly be key to understanding what drives its magnetic activity.
Every 11 years, the Sun's poles flip: north becoming south and vice versa. Right before this event, solar activity increases, sending powerful bursts of solar material into space.
Solar Orbiter will take notice of the surface as it explodes and record measurements as the material goes on the spacecraft.
The only spacecraft to previously fly over the Sun's poles was another joint ESA/NASA venture, the Ulysses, launched in 1990. Nonetheless it got no nearer to the Sun compared to the Earth is.
"You can't really get much closer than Solar Orbiter is certainly going and still consider the Sun," ESA's Muller said.
The mission will be manipulated from the European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany.
After launch, the team will conduct 90 days of testing to make sure systems are operating properly before turning on the in situ instruments.
The remote-sensing instruments will be activated on Solar Orbiter's first approach of sunlight, in November 2021.
It will work in collaboration with NASA's Parker Solar Probe, which launched in 2018 and will fly much nearer to sunlight, passing through the star's inner atmosphere to see how energy flows through its corona.
Source: www.theindependentbd.com
TAG(s):