Parker- Solar Probe
Mission to the Sun
Team Members :-
Abhyuday Shukla
Priyanshu Prasoon
Aryan Shah
Jay Jashnani
INTRODUCTION
NASA's Parker Solar Probe launched on Aug. 12, 2018 aboard a United
Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket. The Parker Solar Probe's mission is to
study the sun in unprecedented detail.
The Parker Solar Probe is named after pioneering astrophysicist Eugene
Parker, who first proposed the existence of solar wind in 1958,
according to the European Space Agency.
Parker visited the probe during its construction and witnessed its
launch, in doing so becoming the first person to ever witness the liftoff
of their namesake spacecraft. Prof. Eugene N. Parker (dead).
The Parker Solar Probe has flown closer to the sun than any other
spacecraft and will continue to shrink its orbit around our star over its
approximately seven-year lifespan.
The revolutionary solar probe became the first spacecraft to "touch" the sun
when it swooped inside the sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, during its
eighth flyby on April 28, 2021
Parker Space Probe was sent in order to unlock the mysteries of the corona
as well as to to protect our society from the threats of space weather.
Parker Solar Probe swoop to within 4 million miles of the Sun's surface,
facing heat and radiation like no spacecraft before it. Launched on Aug. 12,
2018, Parker Solar Probe will provide new data on solar activity and make
critical contributions to our ability to forecast major space-weather events
that impact life on Earth.
Objectives :-
1. Trace the flow of energy that heats the solar corona and accelerates
the solar wind.
• How is energy from the lower solar atmosphere transferred to, and dissipated
in, the corona and solar wind?
• What processes shape the non-equilibrium velocity distributions observed
throughout the heliosphere?
• How do the processes in the corona affect the properties of the solar wind in
the heliosphere?
2. Determine the structure and dynamics of the plasma and
magnetic fields at the sources of the solar wind.
• How does the magnetic field in the solar wind source regions connect to the
photosphere and the heliosphere?
• Are the sources of the solar wind steady or intermittent?
• How do the observed structures in the corona evolve into the solar wind?
3. Explore mechanisms that accelerate and transport energetic
particles.
• What are the roles of shocks, reconnection, waves, and turbulence in the
acceleration of energetic particles?
• What are the source populations and physical conditions necessary for
energetic particle acceleration?
• How are energetic particles transported in the corona and heliosphere?
Trajectory design:-
Parker Solar Probe will use seven Venus flybys over nearly seven years to gradually
shrink its orbit around the Sun, for a total of 24 orbits.
It uses repeated gravity assists at Venus to incrementally decrease its orbital
perihelion to achieve a final altitude (above the surface) of approximately 8.5 solar
radii, or about 6×10^6 km.(Seven times closer than mercury)
As the probe passes around the Sun, it will achieve a velocity of up to 200 km/s (120
mi/s), which will temporarily make it the fastest human-made object.
Like every object in an orbit, due to gravity the spacecraft will accelerate as it nears
perihelion, then slow down again afterward until it reaches its aphelion.
SPACECRAFT
• It is the fastest project ever built with it scheduled to reach its maximum
speed,a whopping 690,000km/h(0.064% of Speed of Light) by 2025.
• The spacecraft's systems are protected from the extreme heat and
radiation near the Sun by a solar shield which can face temperature of
about 1350°C (2,500 °F)
• The primary power for the mission is as expected a dual system of
solar panels (photovoltaic arrays).
• As radio communication with Earth will take about eight minutes in each
direction, the Parker Solar Probe will have to act autonomously and
rapidly to protect itself.
INSTRUMENTS
• FIELDS (Electromagnetic
Fields Investigation)
• IS☉IS (Integrated Science
Investigation of the Sun)
• WISPR (Wide-field Imager
for Solar Probe)
• SWEAP (Solar Wind
Electrons Alphas and
Protons)
SPACECRAFT
• Launch Mass-685kg
• Dry Mass-555kg
• Payload Mass-50kg
• Heliocentric Orbit
• Period-88 days
• Mission Duration- 7 years(Planned)[4 years,2 months elapsed]
FIELDS
• FIELDS captures the scale and shape of electric and magnetic
fields in the Sun's atmosphere.
• FIELDS measures the electric field around the spacecraft with
five antennas, four of which stick out beyond the spacecraft's
heat shield and into the sunlight, where they experience
temperatures of 2,500 °F (1,370 °C).
• The 2-meter-long antennas are made of a niobium alloy, which
can withstand extreme temperatures.
IS☉IS
• The instrument uses two complementary instruments to
measure particles across a wide range of energies. By
measuring electrons, protons and ions, IS ☉IS will understand
the particles' lifecycles — where they came from, how they
became accelerated and how they move out from the Sun
through interplanetary space.
• The two energetic particle instruments on IS ☉IS are called EPI-
Lo and EPI-Hi (EPI stands for Energetic Particle Instrument).
• EPI-Lo measures particles with low energies and EPI-Hi
manages particles with high energy.
WISPR
• These optical telescopes acquire images of the corona and
inner heliosphere.
• WISPR uses two cameras with radiation-hardened Active Pixel
Sensor CMOS detectors.
SWEAP
• This investigation will count the electrons, protons and helium
ions, and measure their properties such as velocity, density, and
temperature.
• Its main instruments are the Solar Probe Analyzers (SPAN, two
electrostatic analyzers) and the Solar Probe Cup (SPC).
• SPC is a Faraday cup, a metal device that can catch charged
particles in a vacuum.
• SPAN is composed of two instruments, SPAN-A and SPAN-B,
which have wide fields of view to allow them to see the parts of
space not observed by SPC
Timeline
Trajectory
Year Date Event
2018 12 August Launch
3 October Venus flyby #1
6 November Perihelion #1
2019 4 April Perihelion #2
1 September Perihelion #3
26 December Venus flyby #2
2020 29 January Perihelion #4
7 June Perihelion #5
11 July Venus flyby #3
27 September Perihelion #6
Year Date Event
2021 17 January Perihelion #7
20 February Venus flyby #4
29 April Perihelion #8
9 August Perihelion #9
16 October Venus flyby #5
21 November Perihelion #10
2022 25 February Perihelion #11
1 June Perihelion #12
6 September Perihelion #13
11 December Perihelion #14
Year Date Event
2023 17 March Perihelion #15
22 June Perihelion #16
21 August Venus flyby #6
27 September Perihelion #17
29 December Perihelion #18
2024 30 March Perihelion #19
30 June Perihelion #20
30 September Perihelion #21
6 November Venus flyby #7
24 December Perihelion #22
Year Date Event
2025 22 March Perihelion #23
19 June Perihelion #24
Findings
● On November 6, 2018, Parker Solar Probe observed first magnetic
switchbacks- sudden reversals in the magnetic field of the solar wind.
They were first observed by the NASA-ESA mission Ulysses, the first
spacecraft to fly over the Sun’s poles, but how and where they form
remain a mystery.
● On December 4, 2019, the first four research papers were published
describing findings during the spacecraft’s first two dives near the sun.
They reported the direction and strength of the Sun’s magnetic field, and
described the unusually frequent and short-lived changes in the
direction of the Sun’s magnetic field. These measurements confirm the
hypothesis that Alfvén waves are the leading candidates for
understanding the mechanisms that underlie the coronal heating
problem.
● Parker discovered evidence of a cosmic dust-free zone of 5.6 million
kilometres radius from the Sun, due to vaporisation of cosmic dust
particles by the Sun's radiation.
● On April 28, 2021, during its eighth flyby
of the Sun, Parker Solar Probe
encountered the specific magnetic and
particle conditions at 18.8 solar radii
that indicated that it penetrated the
Alfvén surface; the probe measured the
solar wind plasma environment with its
FIELDS and SWEAP instruments. This
event was described by NASA as
"touching the Sun".
