Lhe NASA has just made history. Its Parker probe has in fact managed to come as close as possible to the Sun, at a record distance of 6.1 million kilometers, explains the BBC, Friday December 27. To illustrate what this represents, the scientific head of the American space agency, Nicola Fox, explains that “we are 93 million kilometers from the Sun. If I place the Sun and the Earth one meter apart, Parker is therefore 4 centimeters from the Sun.
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The device began its journey in 2018 and therefore gradually moved closer to the Sun. It was able to withstand temperatures of up to 980 degrees, according to the NASA website. The feat carried out in recent days should make it possible to collect more data on the star, the objective being in particular to understand why the atmosphere of the Sun, called the solar corona, is a thousand times hotter than the surface of the Sun itself.
Better understand the solar wind
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This passage of the Parker probe so close to the Sun should also help scientists better understand the solar wind, or the flow of particles that burst out of the solar corona. When these particles interact with the Earth’s magnetic field, we can notably observe aurora phenomena in the sky.
But these particle ejections can also cause problems on Earth and disrupt electrical networks, electronics and communications systems. Thus “understanding the Sun, its activity, space weather, the solar wind, is very important for our daily life on Earth”, summarizes astronomer Jenifer Millard to the BBC.
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