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-------------------- 2598 - SUN - from our latest satellites?
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- We will soon havethe first pictures of the Sun's north and south poles. Solar Orbiter, a collaboration between the European Space Agency, or ESA, and NASA, will have its first opportunity to launch from Cape Canaveral on February 7, 2020.
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- Launching on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, the spacecraft will use Venus's and Earth's gravity to swing itself out of the ecliptic plane, the swath of space, roughly aligned with the Sun's equator, where all planets orbit. From there, Solar Orbiter's view will give it the first-ever look at the Sun's poles.
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- Now, we'll be able to look down on the Sun from above. The Sun plays a central role in shaping space around us. Its massive magnetic field stretches far beyond Pluto, paving a superhighway for charged solar particles known as the solar wind. When bursts of solar wind hit Earth, they can spark space weather storms that interfere with our GPS and communications satellites and they can even threaten astronauts.
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- To prepare for arriving solar storms, scientists monitor the Sun's magnetic field. But their techniques work best with a straight-on view; the steeper the viewing angle, the noisier the data. The sidelong glimpse we get of the Sun's poles from within the ecliptic plane leaves major gaps in the data.
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- The poles are particularly important for us to be able to model more accurately. For forecasting space weather events, we need an accurate model of the global magnetic field of the Sun.
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- The Sun's poles may also explain centuries-old observations. In 1843, German astronomer Samuel Heinrich Schwabe discovered that the number of sunspots. Dark blotches on the Sun's surface marking strong magnetic fields, waxes and wanes in a repeating pattern. Today, we know it as the approximately-11-year solar cycle in which the Sun transitions between solar maximum, when sunspots proliferate and the Sun is active and turbulent, and solar minimum, when they're fewer and it's calmer.
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- But we don't understand why it's 11 years, or why some solar maximums are stronger than others. Observing the changing magnetic fields of the poles could offer an answer.
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- The only prior spacecraft to fly over the Sun's poles was also a joint ESA/NASA venture. Launched in 1990, the Ulysses spacecraft made three passes around our star before it was decommissioned in 2009. But Ulysses never got closer than Earth-distance to the Sun, and only carried instruments, like the sense of touch, that measure the space environment immediately around the spacecraft.
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- Solar Orbiter, on the other hand, will pass inside the orbit of Mercury carrying six remote-sensing imagers, which see the Sun from afar. We are going to be able to map what we 'touch' with the on boaerd instruments and what we 'see' with remote sensing.
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- After years of technology development, it will be the closest any Sun-facing cameras have ever gotten to the Sun. Over the mission's seven year lifetime, Solar Orbiter will reach an inclination of 24 degrees above the Sun's equator, increasing to 33 degrees with an additional three years of extended mission operations.
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- At closest approach the spacecraft will pass within 26 million miles of the Sun. Earth is 93 million miles from the Sun.
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- To beat the heat, Solar Orbiter has a custom-designed titanium heat shield with a calcium phosphate coating that withstands temperatures over 900 degrees Fahrenheit, thirteen times the solar heating faced by spacecraft in Earth orbit. Five of the remote-sensing instruments look at the Sun through peepholes in that heat shield; one observes the solar wind out to the side.
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- Solar Orbiter will be NASA's second major mission to the inner solar system in recent years, following on August 2018's launch of Parker Solar Probe. Parker has completed four close solar passes and will fly within 4 million miles of the Sun at closest approach.
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- The two spacecraft will work together: As Parker samples solar particles up close, Solar Orbiter will capture imagery from farther away, contextualizing the observations. The two spacecraft will also occasionally align to measure the same magnetic field lines or streams of solar wind at different times.
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--------------- - Other reviews available upon request:
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- 2592 - Does the Sun contain the Periodic Table
- 2544 - Stars at our galactic center?
- 2542 - Our closet star?
- 2489 - Sun facts you will not believe?
- 2488 - How hot is the Sun?
- 2346 - What you will not believe about our Sun?
- 2169 - Universe , the one we live in?
- 2168 - Parker Solar Probe. What did we learn?
- 2165 - Why is the Sun so hot?
- 1834 - That Lucky ol’ Sun got nothing to do? This review tells how the Sun gets its energy and how it compares with other stars in the Universe. And, how long will the Sun live?
- 1720 - How do we know the age of the Sun? Some math and lists 10 other reviews on the subject.
- 1674 - What causes a star to evolve into a Red Giant star , like our Sun will do in another 5 billion years.
- 1455 - Our Sun was born with a family of stars?
- 1168 - How many pounds of hydrogen are used in fusion energy to heat up my backyard?
- 918 - What happens to the Sun when it runs out of hydrogen for fusion energy?
- 533 - Why our Sun will become a variable star?
- 383 - Could our Sun be a variable star?
- January 29, 2020 2598
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--------------------- Wednesday, January 29, 2020 --------------------
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