NASA plans to reach the Sun

Chamari Senanayake

Human curiosity has led us to reach space, moon and now through the latest technology, we are reaching Mars. But the ‘big guy’ of our solar system, the almighty sun has always been ‘off limits’. Let alone reaching the Sun, it is impossible to send something even near it. But the brilliant scientists at NASA are now considering firing a space probe directly at the Sun to answer some of the most important questions about our solar system.

A small car-sized spacecraft will plunge into the sun’s atmosphere approximately four million miles from its surface, exploring a region no other spacecraft has ever visited before. The unprecedented project, named ‘Solar Probe Plus’, is scheduled to launch by 2018.

NASA has ventured into five science investigations that will unlock the Sun’s biggest mysteries as the probe repeatedly passes through its atmosphere.

‘This project allows humanity’s ingenuity to go where no spacecraft has ever gone before,’ said Lika Guhathakurta, Solar Probe Plus program scientist at NASA Headquarters, Washington.

‘For the very first time, we’ll be able to touch, taste and smell our sun.’ The mission is also designed to solve two key questions of solar physics, why is the sun’s outer atmosphere so much hotter than the sun’s visible surface and what propels the solar wind that affects Earth and our solar system? Due to Sun’s unimaginable heat, the spacecraft is to be fitted with a new invention at least to minimize the heat affects as long as possible. As the spacecraft approaches the sun, its revolutionary carbon-composite heat shield must withstand temperatures exceeding about 1,400 degrees Celsius (2,550 degrees Fahrenheit) and blasts of intense radiation.

The spacecraft will have an up-close and personal view of the Sun, enabling scientists to better understand and forecast the radiation environment for future space explorers.

NASA invited researchers in 2009 to submit science proposals. Out of the overwhelming response, thirteen were reviewed by a panel consisting of NASA and independent scientists, and the five selected investigations are receiving approximately $180 million for preliminary analysis, design, development and tests. A telescope on the spacecraft will make 3-D images of the sun’s corona, or atmosphere. The experiment actually will see the solar wind and provide 3-D images of clouds and shocks as they approach and pass the spacecraft.

Another will make direct measurements of electric and magnetic fields, radio emissions, and shock waves that course through the sun’s atmospheric plasma. The day we would be able to understand at least some of the mysteries of the Sun, it would be another giant step for the mankind.