NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Completed The First Flight Around The Sun
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe completed the first flight around the Sun, and it already entered the second one out of the 24 such round trips around our star. The space probe took off on August 12th, 2018, and reached the Sun on November 15th. On January 19th, 2019, however, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe reached its farthest distance from the sun. It would approach once again in April.
According to NASA, in a current statement, the Parker Solar Probe sent 17 gigabits of science data during its first trip around the Sun. It would deliver the rest of the data by April, the US space agency added.
“It’s been an illuminating and fascinating first orbit. We’ve learned a lot about how the spacecraft operates and reacts to the solar environment, and I’m proud to say the team’s projections have been very accurate,” explained Andy Driesman, Parker Solar Probe project manager and a researcher at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Lab in Maryland.
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Completed The First Flight Around The Sun
“We’ve always said that we don’t know what to expect until we look at the data. The data we have received hints at many new things that we’ve not seen before and at potential new discoveries. Parker Solar Probe is delivering on the mission’s promise of revealing the mysteries of our sun,” added Nour Raouafi, a NASA’s Parker Solar Probe’s scientist, and a researcher at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Lab in Maryland.
While on its second orbit around the Sun the Parker Solar Probe would keep the same distance from our host star, in its future flybys, the space probe would break its records, approaching to Sun even more and reaching speeds as high as 690,000 km/h.
In the meantime, NASA’s scientists are getting the Parker Solar Probe ready for its second flight around the Sun by emptying the probe’s memory of the data collected in its first orbit. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe would help scientists learn more about the Sun and how it functions, as well as about solar storms.
Vadim is a passionate writer on various topics but especially on stuff related to health, technology, and science. Therefore, for Great Lakes Ledger, Vadim will cover health and Sci&Tech news.
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