Miami – The Parker space probe will be placed this Tuesday, December 24, about six million kilometers from the sun surface and it will be the object manufactured by humans that has come closest to the star of the Solar System, a distance at which it will be able to make unprecedented measurements, according to reports. the POT.
Sent into space in August 2018 from Cape Canaveral, Florida (United States), the Parker probe, weighing 685 kilos, was designed with the goal of “touching the Sun” by orbiting over the so-called ‘Corona’ starting this Christmas Eve. ‘, the outer part of the star’s atmosphere, which will be protected by a heat shield capable of withstanding up to 1,400 degrees Celsius of temperature.
The approach to that distance – equivalent to nine times the radius of the Sun – that the device will make will be the first of several that it will carry out until June 2025, and will be carried out at a speed of 692,000 kilometers per hour (430,000 miles).
In this way, according to the US space agency, Parker will become the fastest object created by humans in history.
“You will be able to make unparalleled measurements of this region, unprecedented measurements that have the potential to transform our understanding of the Sun,” Cristian Ferradas, a space physicist in the Heliophysics division of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, recently told EFE. .
Until that date, and since its first approach to the star, NASA engineers calculate that the probe will have completed 24 orbits of the Sun, with a carbon heat shield 11.43 centimeters thick that will keep its four measuring instruments at room temperature. , that is, about 29 degrees Celsius.
“Although this region of the solar corona has a very high temperature, the density is very low, that is, there are very few hot particles that transfer energy to the ship. The corona is very tenuous and that helps the ship not melt,” Ferradas explained.
A few hours before this approach occurs, NASA researchers warn that it will not be until next Friday, December 27, when communications from the probe will be received and it will be possible to evaluate how the mission has gone.