PARKER SOLAR PROBE: TWO YEARS ON - “THIS COMING DECADE WILL BE THE GOLDEN AGE OF SOLAR AND HELIOPHYSICS RESEARCH”

All About Space catches up with the project scientist for NASA’s incredible Parker Solar Probe mission, Dr Nour Raouafi – a spacecraft continuously breaking records and surpassing all expectations as it orbits the Sun

- Lee Cavendish

How’s the Parker Solar Probe doing? Are there any updates that we should be aware of?

The Parker Solar Probe is doing great. We are going through our fifth encounter and recently we were the closest we’ve ever been to the Sun. After a period of five days where we could not communicate with the spacecraft, it sent us a signal that it’s healthy and it’s doing what it’s supposed to do. In terms of science, it’s just amazing. Whenever the spacecraft gets closer to the Sun, we are learning new things that we’ve never seen before.

What is the major mystery surrounding the Sun and its corona that astronomers are desperately trying to solve, and are hoping the Parker Solar Probe will help shed light on?

There are a few phenomena that were discovered decades ago, but we are still struggling to understand. I think the one that is most puzzling is what we call the ‘coronal heating problem’. The corona, which is the outermost layer of the solar atmosphere, is 300-times hotter than the solar surface. And we know that all the energy is coming from inside the Sun, so in a way it’s counter-intuitive that the source is cooler than the environment around it. But the Parker Solar Probe is giving us clues and hints as to what might be causing excess heating there.