"Even though the sun is so close to us, there's actually a lot about it we don't understand," says heat shield lead engineer Betsy Congdon from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.Scientists expect that this mission would help to solve some of the greatest mysteries regarding with our main source of light and energy, the sun.
The second thing is why does the sun's atmosphere is hotter than its surface. Well, its more than 200 times hotter than the surface to be exact. It is really in-explainable, like a water flowing uphill if you get what I mean.
Over the course of six years, the probe is expected to complete a 24 orbit around the sun. Travelling at the speed of 450,000 miles as it gets closer towards the sun. Below is the map of the probe's route.
"If you think about a football field and the sun's sitting on one side and the Earth's sitting on the other, we're getting within the 5-yard line,"Betsy Congdon says. It is 7 times closer than the previous mission. The circuitous route involves careening closer to the sun and then back out to Venus, which means wild oscillations in temperature. Congdon says protecting the probe's scientific instruments from getting fried is "quite an engineering feat." It basically involves "putting up a big umbrella," she says. The shield is an 8-foot wide disc made of layers of carbon, which would get burnt to a charcoal crisp if it weren't for the fact that there's no oxygen in space. The spacecraft was named after Eugene Parker, a physicist who had predicted the existence of solar winds for almost 60 years in the past. Parker is about to turn 90, and this is the first time NASA has named a spacecraft after a researcher during their lifetime. Watch the full video bellow.
