NASA has revealed an impressive photo of Venus taken with its Parker solar probe 7,693 miles away.
The image, taken on July 11 last year, is an almost disturbing black-and-white shot of the night side of the planet, the side facing the Sun.
A bright rhyme around the edge of the planet is the nocturnal glow: light emitted by oxygen atoms located at the height of the atmosphere and recombining into molecules.
NASA’s $ 1.5 billion Parker solar probe, which focuses on the study of the Sun and represents humanity’s first visit to a star, was launched in August 2018.
However, Venus plays an important role in Parker’s mission for seven years, as it takes advantage of the planet’s gravitational traction for multiple flights.
This new image that was taken in July was taken during the third of seven Venus flights scheduled along the Parker mission.
NASA’s Parker solar probe had a close-up view of Venus when it flew around the planet in July 2020. Some of the features that scientists saw are labeled in this annotated image. The dark spot that appears at the bottom of Venus is an artifact of the WISPR instrument
Parker successfully completed his fourth flight over Venus just last Saturday (February 20).
This new July image was taken by the spacecraft’s WISPR instrument: Wide-field Imager for Parker Solar Probe.
WISPR is designed to take images of the solar corona and inner heliosphere with visible light, as well as images of the solar wind and its structures as they approach and fly through the spacecraft.
The most prominent dark feature in the center of the image is Aphrodite Earth, the largest surface region on the planet’s surface.
The feature appears dark due to its lower temperature, approximately 30 ° C (85 ° F) colder than its surroundings.
This aspect of the image surprised the team, according to Angelos Vourlidas, a scientist in the WISPR project at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland.
“WISPR is designed and tested for visible light observations; we expected to see clouds, but the camera looked up at the surface,” Vourlidas said.
Although Parker Solar Probe focuses on the Sun, Venus plays a critical role in the mission. The spacecraft whips Venus a total of seven times during its seven-year mission. In the image, impression of Parker and the artist’s sun
This startling observation sent the WISPR team back to the lab to measure the sensitivity of the instrument to infrared light.
If WISPR can capture near-infrared light wavelengths, it would provide new opportunities to study dust around the Sun and the inner solar system.
If it cannot capture additional infrared wavelengths, then these images, which show firing signatures on the surface of Venus, may have revealed a previously unknown “window” through the Venusian atmosphere.
“Either way, some exciting scientific opportunities await us,” Vourlidas said.
Parker’s main scientific goals are to track the flow of energy and understand the warming of the solar corona (the outermost layer of the Sun) and explore what accelerates the solar wind.
Although Parker focuses on the Sun, Venus plays a key role in its seven-year mission, which will run until 2025.
The spacecraft will explode to Venus seven times in total, using the planet’s gravity to bend the spacecraft’s orbit and reduce its orbital energy.
These Venus gravity aids allow Parker to fly ever closer to the Sun on his mission to study the dynamics of the solar wind near its source.
In his seven-year career, Parker is making up to 24 approximations close to the Sun (known as the perihelion), with each closer than the previous one.
As it gets closer, Parker will move around the Sun at about 430,000 miles per hour, fast enough to go from Philadelphia to Washington, DC, in a single second.
Parker was launched on August 12, 2018 and uses the gravity of Venus to bend its orbit. These aids by gravity allow Parker to fly closer and closer to the Sun. Each new close approach is called perihelion. Its first flight over Venus was on October 3, 2018 and the first perihelion arrived on November 6, 2018 (03:27 UTC), at about Rs 35.7 from the Sun. Rs means solar radius. 1 Rs is the distance from the center of the Sun to its surface (approximately 696,000 kilometers)
It will travel up to 3.83 million miles to the Sun’s surface, facing heat and radiation “like no spacecraft before,” NASA says.
This is within the orbit of Mercury and about seven times closer than any other spacecraft.
Parker uses a thermal shield known as the thermal protection system, which is 8 meters in diameter and 4.5 inches thick.
At the closest approach to the Sun, while the front of the Parker Solar Probe shield faces temperatures approaching 1,400 ° C (2,600 ° F), the spacecraft’s payload will be at near room temperature, about 85 ° F.
The WISPR team captured more observations of Venus night during Parker’s last Venus flyby just five days ago.
At 20:05 GMT on Saturday, Parker passed 2,385 km above the surface as it curved around the planet and moved about 25 km per second.
Scientists on the mission team hope to receive and process this data for analysis in late April.
“We’re looking forward to these new images,” said planetary scientist Javier Peralta, who works on Akatsuki, the Japanese spacecraft that studies Venus ’atmosphere.
“If WISPR can detect thermal emission from the surface of Venus and the nocturnal glow, most likely from oxygen, at the extremity of the planet, it can make valuable contributions to studies of the Venusian surface.”
Venus ’fourth gravity assist this weekend prepares Parker for his eighth and ninth perihelion, scheduled for April 29 and August 9.
During each of these steps, Parker will break his own record as he approaches approximately 6.5 million miles of the solar surface, approximately 1.9 million miles closer than the previous perihelion of 8.4 million. miles on January 17th.
Parker was launched on August 12, 2018 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and only 78 days later became the closest artificial object to the Sun, surpassing the record set in April 1976 by the spacecraft. Helios 2 (a joint venture of West Germany and NASA). .
The mission is named after Eugene Parker, American solar astrophysicist at the University of Chicago – the first NASA mission named after a living individual.
In the 1950s, Parker proposed various concepts about how stars, including our Sun, give off energy.
He called this energy cascade the solar wind and described a whole complex system of plasmas, magnetic fields and energy particles that form this phenomenon.
HOW WILL THE PARKER SOLAR PROBE BE SO CLOSE TO THE SUN?
The Parker Solar Probe mission will require 55 times more energy than needed to reach Mars, according to NASA.
It was launched on top of a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy, one of the most powerful rockets in the world, with a third stage attached.
But its trajectory and speed are key to reaching the right orbit.
Because the Earth and everything above it travels at about 67,000 miles per hour in a direction that is lateral to the sun, the spacecraft must be thrown backwards to cancel out lateral motion, NASA explains. .
The Parker spacecraft passes beyond the sun, so it will have to eliminate about 53,000 miles per hour, according to the space agency.
The Parker solar probe will revolve around Venus a total of seven times, each step will slow it down and bring it closer and closer to the sun. These orbits are shown in the previous animation
This will require a boost from the powerful Delta IV rocket and various aids from the gravity of Venus to slow it down.
The probe will rely on a series of Venus gravity assists to slow lateral movement, allowing it to move just 3.8 million kilometers away from the surface of the sun.
“In this case, instead of accelerating the spacecraft, as in a typical gravity assistance, Venus slows down lateral movement so that the spacecraft can approach the sun,” NASA explains.
“When it finally approaches, Parker Solar Probe will have lost much of its lateral speed, but will have gained a great overall speed thanks to the gravity of the sun.
“The Parker solar probe will pass in front of the sun at 430,000 miles per hour.”
At its closest point, it will reach just 3.8 million miles from the sun’s surface, making it the only spacecraft to have ventured so close.