Check out this video of the "streamers" the probe encountered in the corona: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQXNqhQzBLM
NASA spacecraft ‘touches’ the Sun for the first time ever
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Re: NASA spacecraft ‘touches’ the Sun for the first time ever
#72Since getting that close takes a lot of DeltaV and I was curious: >The Parker Solar Probe mission design 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 6×106 km (3.7×106 mi; 0.040 au).[35] The spacecraft trajectory will include seven Venus flybys over nearly seven years to gradually shri…
Why not just write 636 km?
Re: NASA spacecraft ‘touches’ the Sun for the first time ever
#73Humans can do anything
Re: NASA spacecraft ‘touches’ the Sun for the first time ever
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Relevant part: the capturing cups are of metals with high melting points, plus > The corona through which Parker Solar Probe flies, for example, has an extremely high temperature but very low density. Think of the difference between putting your hand in a hot oven versus putting it in a pot of boiling water And for the rest of the craft there is a highly reflective heat shield.
Not sure I get the oven analogy. If I stick my hand in for a few seconds, sure, but if I was in the oven, I'll burn and die there too.
Imagine sticking your hand in the oven for 1 second. Now imagine sticking it in a pot of boiling water for 1 second. One you do every day, the other is an immediate trip to the hospital. What’s the difference? Water is far more dense than the air in the oven thus will transfer much more heat to your hand over that same duration.
Re: NASA spacecraft ‘touches’ the Sun for the first time ever
#75Please tell me this mission ends with the Venera/Cassini treatment of "let's drop the sucker into the atmosphere and see how long it lasts"
It’s not possible sadly. In order to crash into the sun you’d need to get out of orbit, counter-intuitively. The orbital speeds here are crazy high so the spacecraft would need either a gigantic amount of gravity assists or a gigantic rocket.
Re: NASA spacecraft ‘touches’ the Sun for the first time ever
#76Since getting that close takes a lot of DeltaV and I was curious: >The Parker Solar Probe mission design 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 6×106 km (3.7×106 mi; 0.040 au).[35] The spacecraft trajectory will include seven Venus flybys over nearly seven years to gradually shri…
Why not just write 636 km?
[deleted]
Re: NASA spacecraft ‘touches’ the Sun for the first time ever
#77Since getting that close takes a lot of DeltaV and I was curious: >The Parker Solar Probe mission design 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 6×106 km (3.7×106 mi; 0.040 au).[35] The spacecraft trajectory will include seven Venus flybys over nearly seven years to gradually shri…
Why not just write 636 km?
It was meant to be 6×10^6 -- as a quick soundness check, the sun's radius is significantly more than 75 km (636 / 8.5) -- though I agree it would probably have been more reasonable to just write "6 million km"
Re: NASA spacecraft ‘touches’ the Sun for the first time ever
#78Re: NASA spacecraft ‘touches’ the Sun for the first time ever
#79If you’re curious why it won’t melt: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/traveling-to-the-s...
They're going at night, duh
Re: NASA spacecraft ‘touches’ the Sun for the first time ever
#80This is huge. It’s fun seeing people I worked with mentioned in a news article on a project that seemed so far off when I left the field in 2012.