NASA is planning to send a space probe to the sun. It will task to study the sun winds and flares.
NASA is going to send Solar Probe Plus that will withstand the 2,500 Fahrenheit temperature of the sun. It will land at our star to study dangerous solar activities that can potentially harm us, Mail Online stated. Solar Probe Plus or SPP will be seven times closer to the sun than any other spacecraft has done before. It will enter within the 4 million miles of the sun's surface.
Next year is the target date of NASA. The Solar Probe Plus will face extreme heat and radiation. It will have a shield, a specially designed shield that will protect itself from the heat of the sun. A 4.5 inch or 11.4 cm thick carbon composite that can take up to 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit or 1,370 Celsius, the Space Reporter reported. Thermal radiators or heat tubes will protect the inside of the spacecraft. Additionally, the inside will be at room temperature only. Its memory and electric circuits will also be protected from the harmful solar radiation.
The spacecraft can carry an astronaut inside, a NASA research scientist said. However, it will cost more time and money plus there are many safety issues that need to be tackled, said Eric Christian, a NASA scientist researcher at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
NASA is going to send Solar Probe Plus to the sun to answer three questions that NASA still doesn't know. The first puzzle is why its corona, which is 3.5 million degrees Fahrenheit, is hotter than its photosphere, which is only 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The second unanswerable question is the sun's solar wind, scientists do not know how it can accelerate that fast, at million miles per hour. The last question is its releasing of high-energy solar energetic particles.
