NASA plans to get real close to the sun

Posted by Golden on September 5th, 2010

In what seemed like impossibility, NASA is planning to get closer to the sun through the use of an unmanned spacecraft the size of a car which they will send into space. This move is not just to get a craft to space as is usually the case but to get it closer to the sun than ever before. This car sized space craft is called the solar probe plus (SPP). Scientists at NASA are planning to launch the SPP sometime before 2018. when asked how this craft will prevent melting by the high temperatures of the sun, the scientists explained that before this craft will be destroyed by sizzling temperatures from the sun exceeding 1,400?C, the craft would have succeeded in obtaining valuable information about our parent star-the sun. The solar probe plus will gulp a whopping sum of 0 million.

To withstand the temperatures and radiation the instrument will be protected by a shield called the carbon composite heat shield. However, this shield is yet to be built.

The sun is one of the few remaining places where mankind has not sent a spacecraft. Solar probe plus program scientists at NASA said that ?for the first time, we will be able to touch, taste and smell our sun?. The space craft will have several instruments among them solar wind particle detector, a 3D camera, a device that measures the magnetic field.

This planned venture into the sun is coming on the heels of a February cancellation of a planned return to the moon. Solar probe plus has been in the works for several months now. It was even published in an announcement of opportunity by NASA for scientific investigations in December. They invited researchers to submit project proposals to the agency. The proposals was announced this week and include the analysis of the abundance and properties in the solar wind, a direct measurements of the sun?s electric and magnetic field.

NASA scientists do not have many resources to work with. President Obama?s scrapping of the NASA?s moon mission fixed the cost of scientific projects at 0 million for design, analysis, development and testing. Due to the projected size of the unmanned launch vehicle, the probe?s total payload has been constrained to 40kg.

Despite these limitations, the mission highlighted what cheap robotic missions can accomplish. Lika Guhathakurta a solar probe plus program scientist said ?this project will allow humanity?s ingenuity to go where no space craft has ever gone?.

The sun?s outer cover is called the corona. The corona is many hundred times hotter than the visible surface of the star or even the photosphere. The corona of the sun is always visible during total solar eclipse. It is the corona of the sun with its million degrees plasma charged particles that generates super magnetic fields.

The solar probe plus is designed to solve two key problems 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?