NASA’s Parker Solar Probe—Uncovering the Sun’s Secrets Part 1 of 3

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe—Uncovering the Sun’s Secrets

Part One

By E. Stanley Ukeni

Like millions of people around the world, I was awed by NASA’s announcement, on Wednesday, May 31^st, 2017, that the United States Space Agency is planning to launch an ambitious unmanned space expedition to study the Sun, at close proximity.

I decided to write a three part piece, exploring possible insights into the technology behind the solar probe, and the potential scientific benefits to be derived from this ambitious expedition to our sun. 

The technologically advance, 10-foot- high, Solar Probe—cased in a nearly 5 inch coat of high-tech carbon-composite solar shield, is expected to liftoff sometime in the summer of 2018. The 1,350-pound spacecraft is expected to enter orbit deep inside the sun’s corona sometime in 2024.

The Parker Solar Probe—aptly named, in honor of Dr. Eugene Parker, the University of Chicago professor who successfully predicted the existence of solar wind as far back as 1958, is intended to eventually orbit within about 3.7 miles of the sun’s surface. It is expected to spend approximately seven years flying to and around the sun—looping around the planet Venus seven times.

The spacecraft is expected to receive a gravitational boost during each of its seven elliptical orbital flybys of Venus—edging closer to the sun’s corona each time, until it reaches its target proximity.

To put this in prospective, the solar spacecraft—at a mere four million miles from the sun, will endure scorching temperatures of about 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit. This is literarily enough heat to fry the circuits of any spacecraft that NASA has previously built and deployed to space.

But then, the Parker Solar Probe is no ordinary spacecraft. Its recently developed carbon composite shield will serve to protect the craft’s four main instrument groups—keeping them operating at room temperature, deep inside the sun’s super-hot inferno.

At that proximity to the sun’s corona, scientists would be able to gain greater insights into the workings of our Sun with the aid of cutting-edge scientific instrument that the Solar Probe will be equipped with.

That would put the probe closer to the sun than any spacecraft has ever reached, in the history of human space exploration. This ambitious mission, if successful, would be a truly remarkable scientific feat, and a historic human achievement. 

I learnt from my research for this article that the only other time that man-made craft attempted to closer observation of our sun was in 1976, when a probe called ‘Helios 2’ came within 27 million miles of the sun. That expedition left scientists with more questions than answers.

NASA’s stated objectives for the mission includes, tracing the flow of energy that heats and accelerates the sun’s corona and solar wind, and determining the structure and dynamics of the plasma and magnetic fields at the source of the solar wind, and to explore the mechanisms that accelerate and transport energetic particles.

While these are compelling enough reasons for NASA to embark on this spectacular solar exploration, I felt that there is more they are not divulging about the core scientific purpose for launching the expedition.    

After listening to the Wednesday’s briefing by Nicola Fox—mission project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, I decided to look into possible areas of science that would greatly benefit from this solar expedition.

The following are some of the areas of astrophysics that I think will benefit from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe voyage to the edge of the sun—our star’s corona:

·         The Parker Solar Probe will probably offer closer insight into the dynamics of coronal loops emerging from the sun’s surface layer, the photosphere—the giant filaments of plasma protruding into the solar atmosphere. The data that would be gathered from this observation will assist astrophysicists in creating a more detailed and dynamic model of this turbulent and unpredictable region of the sun.

·         I would imagine that the Probe will analyze a range of charged particles within the sun’s corona, including energetic particles emanating from coronal mass ejections—these are explosions emanating from the sun’s surface. These particles influence conditions on Earth.

·         NASA mission engineers would probably install super high-definition camera on the spacecraft that would take ultra-high-resolution images of hard x-rays and gamma rays emitted from the sun during solar flares. It is believed that much of the energy released during a solar flare goes into accelerating charged protons and electrons to very high energies, but the details are not well understood. Perhaps, the Parker Solar Probe will finally help astronomers to gain greater insight into this mysterious phenomenon.  

·         Instruments within the Parker Solar Probe will conceivably trace the flow of energy and plasma between the sun’s upper layer and atmosphere, known as the corona. A long standing problem in solar astrophysics is explaining exactly why the temperature of the corona region of the sun is millions of degrees hot, while the temperature of the surface of the sun rises to mere thousands of degrees. It has always been problematic for astronomers to image the layer between the surface and the corona of the sun, known as the chromosphere, but the Parker Solar Probe, at a mere 3.7 million miles from the sun’s surface, it would be much easier to study it.

·         The Parker Solar Probe will probably be equipped with sensitive instrumentations to closely monitor the sun’s oscillations. Scientists have known for a while that the sun emits a resonance that is about 100,000 times lower than the middle C octave, in the musical note. A closer study of this distinct and subtle sound waves, employing a technique called helioseismology, will enable Astrophysicists  scientists to gain greater insight into what is occurring all over the interior of the Sun. 

Most tantalizing however, is the fact that particle physicist have long been on the hunt for exotic particles from the Sun. I figured that, perhaps, there are instruments on the Solar Probe designed to detect and analyze the structure and composition of such hypothetical entities like Axions and Chameleons—particles that may constitute the makeup of dark matter and dark energy, which our sun may be emitting.

As I pondered on this notion, I was forcibly inspired with the psychic impulse suggesting that this solar expedition would, perhaps, discover an even more exotic particle, which I will here refer to as the ‘Spectrion’ wave-particle—which stabilizes the fusion process taking place within the sun’s core. This class of particle, I suspect, had been previously undetectable because they decay rapidly upon reaching the corona region of the sun.

I would dare to advance a hypothesis that the photosphere region of the sun is populated with massive amounts of Spectrion wave-particles. However, they transform into other readily identifiable particles once they collide with other particles at the chromosphere region of the sun.

I am of the sense though, that a small number of these exotic particles migrate onto the corona region before they are annihilated upon collusion with other particles. If the Parker Solar Probe can manage to identify and analyze this elusive wave-particle it decays, physicists will be able to advance the field of nuclear fusion science within a relatively short period.

These elusive and exotic Spectrions if discovered and understood, may give our scientists greater insight into how our sun is able generate a stable nuclear fusion. This knowledge would in turn considerably advance the science of creating a viable fusion reactor here on earth. I will delve more into the topic of nuclear fusion possibilities, and the promise, it holds for the supply of abundant and unlimited energy to the inhabitants of planet earth, in third part of this article.  

NASA revealed, during its brief, that the Parker Solar Probe mission is scheduled to terminate in June of 2025. Hopefully by then, scientists would have mastered the science of Nuclear Fusion Reactor technology.  

You can access the Part Two of this post here 

You can access the Part Three of this posthere 

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