Word of the day** #SpacetoSpace*1. Parker Solar Probe* Among the various places humans have aspired to visit in the solar system, the sun remains the most foreboding. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe arrived within 6.1 million km of the star’s surface. This is a short distance to be from the sun: no spacecraft has ever made such a close approach. Even the Parker Solar Probe took seven years to get here.The probe is making regular attempts to arrive within 6 million km of Sun’s surface.*Naming of Probe*Around six decades ago, a scientist named Eugene Parker predicted the existence of the solar wind: a stream of charged particles flowing out from the sun in all directions. NASA named the Parker Solar Probe in his honour.*Launch*The probe was launched on board a Delta IV rocket from Cape Canaveral in Florida in August 2018. Once in space, the probe’s maximum speed was an astounding 692,000 km/hr.*Shield*To protect against the sun’s intense heat, the probe has an 8-foot-wide, 4.5-inch thick carbon-carbon composite material shield that can withstand up to 1,370º C while weighing only 73 kg. This shield was built by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. It consists of a carbon composite foam sandwiched between two carbon plates. Its sun-facing side is coated with white ceramic paint to reflect as much sunlight as possible instead of absorbing it.Just a few metres behind the shield, in its shadow, the ambient temperature drops to 29º C, allowing the probe’s scientific instruments to operate without special provisions to maintain the temperature. *Solar powered*The probe also has two sets of solar power arrays: one in the shield’s shadow that supplies power to the instruments and the other on the sun-facing side, which uses a special fluid pump to cool itself while powering the probe during its close approaches.*Moving around Sun*Curiously, the first obstacle to the mission’s success wasn’t the sun’s heat but its gravity. Since the probe flew through space at a very high speed, it had to decelerate significantly as it got close to the sun. If it didn’t, the sun’s gravity would have encouraged it to dive right into the star. The probe used the combined gravitational forces of the earth and Venus to slowly spiral closer to the sun’s surface.*Instruments on board*The probe has four scientific instruments: FIELDS, Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun (ISoIS), Wide-Field Imager (WISPR), and Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons (SWEAP). FIELDS measures the electric and magnetic fields of the sun’s atmosphere; ISoIS observes the energetic particles that cause solar storms while SWEAP records their properties; and WISPR takes pictures as it passes through the corona.*Test your Learning*Q. The objective of Parker probe is to study(a) Sun(b) Jupiter(c) Outer Solar System(d) Inter-Stellar UniversePlease give the Answer if you are really interested in Space science and technology and Astronomy as well.#spacetospace⭐💫💥🌟✨💫
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