NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has become the first spacecraft to ‘touch’ the sun in April 2021, although it was confirmed in December 2021 by scientists after waiting for months on the data to confirm the discovery.
- Launched in 2018, Parker Solar Probe was built to answer fundamental questions about the solar wind that is released from the corona – the sun’s upper atmosphere.
- The Parker Solar Probe actually flew through the corona in April 2021 during its eight attempt. It battled temperatures of 2370F and radiation 500 times stronger than on Earth as it made its eighth approach to the celestial body, finally passing through its upper atmosphere.
- Future coronal excursions will help scientist better understand the origin of the solar wind, and how it is heated and accelerated out into space.
- Parker Probe will keep drawing ever closer to the sun and diving deeper into the corona until its grand finale orbit in 2025.
About Sun
- The sun is the star at the heart of out Solar System.
- The Sun has a diameter of 1.39 million km, and is 330 times the mass of the Earth.
- Three quarters of the Sun is made of hydrogen, followed by helium, oxygen, carbon, neon and iron.
- The Sun is a G-type main sequence star and is sometimes called a yellow dwarf.
- The Sun formed from the gravitational collapse of matter in a large molecular cloud that gathered in the centre.
GS TIMES UPSC PRELIMS 2022 CURRENT AFFAIRS BASED BASICS DAILY ONLINE TEST CLICK HERE
CLICK HERE DAILY CURRENT AFFAIRS QUIZ FOR STATE CIVIL SERVICES
