NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has made history after becoming the first spacecraft to plunge into the Sun’s atmosphere. The milestone journey was made on 28 April 2021, nearly three years after the probe’s launch in August 2018. It happened during Parker’s eighth flyby of the star at the centre of our Solar System. The probe spent a total of five hours travelling amid the plasma and solar winds in the Sun’s upper atmosphere, or corona.
The landmark event was not announced until 14 December because the data recorded by the probe took several months to reach Earth, and then several more to be processed and analysed by scientists.
“We were fully expecting that, sooner or later, we would encounter the corona for at least a short duration of time,” commented Dr Justin Kasper, lead author of the paper that announced the historic flyby, published in Physical Review Letters. “But it is very exciting that we’ve already reached it,” said Kasper, who is associate professor of climate and space sciences and engineering at the University of Michigan.
この記事は BBC Science Focus の January 2022 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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この記事は BBC Science Focus の January 2022 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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COULD MARINE CLOUD BRIGHTENING HELP US FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE?
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HOW CAN I TELL IF I'VE GOT HIGH CORTISOL LEVELS?
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Should we scrap daylight saving time?
Most of us look forward to the extra hour we get in bed every October, but researchers argue that changing the clocks twice a year harms our health
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SCIENTISTS ARE USING ELECTRONIC TAGS AND SATELLITES TO TRACK WILD ANIMALS AND CREATE A DATA NETWORK THAT COULD HELP US ADDRESS THE BIODIVERSITY CRISIS
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