According to RCO News Agency, quoted by ABC, NASA is preparing the Parker Solar Probe for the last pass by Mars to continue its journey and become the first human-made object to reach such a close distance from the Sun.
Parker uses the planet’s gravity to change its speed and direction so it can enter its final orbit around the Sun, breaking the record it set last year.
NASA predicts that this probe will pass by 3.86 million miles from the surface of the Sun on December 24, 2024. At such a close distance from a solar system star, the solar probe will pass through clumps of plasma that are still attached to the sun, according to a statement from the US space agency. This will bring the probe close enough to the sun to pass through solar flares like a surfer in the ocean waves.
NASA’s mission control team will lose communications for 3 days during Parker’s close pass by the Sun on December 24. If the operation is successful, the probe will send a signal to the project team on December 27, confirming the proper functioning of the instrument.
Adam Szabo, researcher of the Parker Solar Probe project at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, says: This is an important engineering achievement.
The Parker Solar Probe was launched on August 12, 2018 with the aim of investigating the outermost layer of the Sun’s atmosphere, which is also known as the “solar corona”.
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