3-2-1… and we have liftoff of Parker #SolarProbe atop @ULAlaunch’s #DeltaIV Heavy rocket. Tune in as we broadcast o… https://t.co/eWSfXCc2Hw
— NASA (@NASA) 1534059282000
* Saturday's scrub was caused by a helium gas sensor that surpassed a launch limit on the Delta IV-Heavy rocket, United Launch Alliance (ULA) said. The weather forecast was expected to be about 60 percent favourable for launch, according to ULA.
* The probe is designed to plunge into the Sun's mysterious atmosphere, known as the corona, coming within 3.83 million miles (6.16 million kilometres) of its surface during a seven-year mission.
* The corona gives rise to the solar wind, a continuous flow of charged particles that permeates the solar system. Unpredictable solar winds cause disturbances in our planet's magnetic field and can play havoc with communications technology on Earth. Nasa hopes the findings will enable scientists to forecast changes in Earth's space environment.
* The project, with a $1.5 billion price tag, is the first major mission under Nasa's Living With a Star program.
* The probe is set to use seven Venus flybys over nearly seven years to steadily reduce its orbit around the Sun, using instruments designed to image the solar wind and study electric and magnetic fields, coronal plasma and energetic particles. Nasa aims to collect data about the inner workings of the highly magnetized corona.
* It is protected by an ultra-powerful heat shield that can endure unprecedented levels of heat, and radiation 500 times that experienced on Earth.
* The car-sized probe is designed to give scientists a better understanding of solar wind and geomagnetic storms that risk wreaking chaos on Earth by knocking out the power grid.
* The tools on board will measure the expanding corona and continually flowing atmosphere known as the solar wind, which solar physicist Eugene Parker first described in 1958. Parker, now 91, recalled that at first some people did not believe in his theory.
* The previous closest pass to the Sun was by a probe called Helios 2, which in 1976 came within 27 million miles (43 million km). By way of comparison, the average distance from the Sun for Earth is 93 million miles (150 million km).
* "It's of fundamental importance for us to be able to predict this space weather, much like we predict weather here on Earth," said Alex Young, a solar scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland. "In the most extreme cases of these space weather events, it can actually affect our power grids here on Earth."
* The probe, named after American solar astrophysicist Eugene Newman Parker, will have to survive difficult heat and radiation conditions. It has been outfitted with a heat shield designed to keep its instruments at a tolerable 85 degrees Fahrenheit (29 degrees Celsius) even as the spacecraft faces temperatures reaching nearly 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,370 degrees Celsius) at its closest pass.
(With inputs from agencies)
from Times of India https://ift.tt/2MBDPx7
