NEW YORK: US scientists are planning to send a spacecraft to the sun to study the streams of charged particles it hurls into space. Experts have grappled with this mission concept for over 30 years. Now, a team at NASA's Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) is developing a special spacecraft for the Solar Probe mission.
At closest approach, Solar Probe would zip past the sun at 200 km per second, protected by a carbon-composite heat shield that must withstand up to 1,400 degrees Celsius, and also survive blasts of radiation and energised dust at levels not experienced by any previous spacecraft.
"Solar Probe is a true mission of exploration," said Robert Decker, Solar Probe Project Scientist at APL. "And, as with all missions of discovery, Solar Probe is likely to raise more questions than it answers."
APL will design and build the spacecraft, on a schedule to launch in 2015. The compact, solar-powered probe would weigh about 500 kg. Preliminary designs of the spacecraft include carbon-foam-filled solar shield – 9 feet in diameter, and 6 inches thick – atop the spacecraft body.
Two sets of solar arrays would retract or extend as the spacecraft swings toward or away from the sun, making sure the panels stay at proper temperatures and power levels. At its closest passes, the spacecraft will have to survive solar intensity more than 500 times of that while orbiting Earth.
Over seven years, Solar Probe will gradually shrink its orbit around the sun, coming as close as 6.6 million kilometres to the sun, well within the orbit of Mercury and about eight times closer than any spacecraft has come before.
"The technology is within reach, the concept is feasible and the entire mission can be done for about the cost of a medium-class planetary mission," said Andrew Dantzler, APL's Solar Probe Project Manager. PTI
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