NASA awaits with bated breath the signal from the spacecraft exploring the Sun

This week, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe attempted to get closer to the Sun than any other man-made object. But due to a planned communications blackout, the team behind the mission won’t know if the daring search for the spacecraft was a success for at least another day.

On Tuesday, the Parker solar probe would approach to an uncomfortably close distance of 6.1 million kilometers (3.8 million miles) from the Sun’s surface, during which time the spacecraft was supposed to be out of contact with mission control. According POTThe probe is scheduled to transmit a beacon on Friday to confirm whether or not it survived its unprecedented close encounter with the Sun.

“No man-made object has ever passed this close to a star, so Parker will truly return data from unexplored territory,” Nick Pinkine, operations manager for the Parker Solar Probe mission at the Physics Laboratory, said in a statement. Johns Hopkins Applied. “We are excited to hear from the spacecraft as it orbits the Sun.”

If successful, Tuesday’s flyby will be the first of three encounters at the same distance. During its perihelion, the spacecraft will zip past the Sun at a whopping 430,000 miles per hour, breaking its own record for the fastest speed at which any man-made object has ever traveled. At that speed, the probe could travel from Washington, DC to Philadelphia in one second. During its approach, the spacecraft must endure very high temperatures of 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit (982.2 degrees Celsius), while maintaining its much cooler internal temperatures of 85 degrees Fahrenheit (29.4 degrees Celsius). Parker does this with a heat shield several centimeters thick, which reflects most of the Sun’s heat.

The Parker Solar Probe was launched in August 2018 to observe our host star at an unprecedented distance, that is, close. Since its launch, the spacecraft has been preparing for its perihelion, or closest approach, getting closer to the Sun on each orbit. The Parker probe has made 21 close approaches to the Sun, approaching within 4.51 million miles (7.26 million kilometers) of the solar surface. In November, the Parker Solar Probe carried out its seventh and final flyby of Venus, taking advantage of the planet’s gravitational pull to set the spacecraft on a trajectory toward its closest solar approach.

As it accelerates toward the Sun’s surface, the Parker probe will gather valuable data about the star and how it influences the space environment around it. “This is an example of NASA’s bold missions, doing something no one has done before to answer long-standing questions about our universe,” Arik Posner, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe program scientist, said in a statement. “We look forward to receiving the first update on the spacecraft’s status and beginning to receive scientific data in the coming weeks.”