William Atkins
Friday, 03 September 2010 23:58
Science -
Space
Page 1 of 3
NASA announced on September 2, 2010, that it will be developing a mission to the Sun over the next few years that will be the closest we have ever gone to our local star, the Sun. Five investigations will help us unravel mysteries of our Sun.
The NASA Solar Probe Plus (
Solar Probe +) mission is now tentatively slated to launch on 2018 or later.
NASA previously announced that the Applied Physics Laboratory (
APL) at Johns Hopkins University will design and build the spacecraft.
The mission will cause the tiny spacecraft (it’s about the same size as a small car) to
“... plunge directly into the sun’s atmosphere approximately four million miles from our star’s surface.”When doing this the small explorer will go where no spacecraft has gone before.
Within the September 2, 2010 NASA media brief “
NASA Selects Investigations for First Mission to Encounter the Sun,” NASA states that,
“… five science investigations … will unlock the sun’s biggest mysteries.”Dick Fisher, who is the director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters, made the following statement: "
The experiments selected for Solar Probe Plus are specifically designed to solve two key questions 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? "Fisher adds,
“We've been struggling with these questions for decades and this mission should finally provide those answers." To enable the spacecraft to endure the hot temperatures of the Sun, it will have a
“… revolutionary carbon-composite heat shield [that will] withstand temperatures exceeding 2,550 degrees Fahrenheit and blasts of intense radiation.”Page two continues with descriptions of the five investigations selected by NASA for this historic journey to the Sun.
