NASA Preps Closest-Ever Sun Mission

coondoggie writes "NASA today said it had picked five experiments that will ride aboard one of its most ambitious space missions to explore the Sun. The Solar Probe, a car-sized spacecraft, is scheduled to launch no later than 2018 and will fly closer to the Sun's surface than any other probe, NASA stated. Ultimately the spacecraft's goals are to help scientists understand why the sun's outer atmosphere so much hotter than the sun's visible surface and what propels the solar wind that affects Earth and our solar system, NASA said."

Re:When it comes to naming the mission...

[$RANDOMLUSER]

IKAROS [wikipedia.org] has already been used.

I thought they already knew why corona is hotter..

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Ultimately the spacecraft's goals are to help scientists understand why the sun's outer atmosphere so much hotter than the sun's visible surface and what propels the solar wind ...

I thought they'd figured that out (recently): Vibrations of the solar magnetic field line loops pump energy into the plasma fraction of the gas above the visible "surface", heating it. Reconnection of the lines cause the new loops to expand like released springs, catapulting the entrapped plasma outward.

Didn't that work out once they finished the math on the details?

Re:Heat shielding?

[Animaether]

I'll admit that my source for this is the Sunshine DVD's commentary track, but...

The surface of the sun is not nearly as hot as the re-entry temperatures for some of the probes returning to Earth; and they don't plan on going anywhere near the surface of the sun with the Solar Probe.. 2 million kilometers or something (according to that same DVD).

They'll be fine with the tech for shielding against heat that we've already got.

Re:Why does NASA not fund metalurgical research?

[jonfr]

This video and it's maker deserve to be called stupid.

As they don't know that the white dot is a planet Venus or Mercury.

That person also doesn't know comets and meteor from background noise on the SOHO image.

This video is not even worth my time wasting it on this video.

Re:Actively radiating heat to get even closer?

[bertok]

The Russians were faced with the same dilemma.

They used a mirror.

You joke, but that's precisely what everyone does already. That gold foil that you see covering spacecraft is used because gold is an excellent reflector of infrared light.

Distance from the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

For some reason both the article and the probe's homepage skips mentioning how close to the sun this probe will approach. It is based on an earlier, rejected mission that would go as close as 4 solar radii, and to make things cheaper it will go to a closest distance of 9.5 solar radii. That is the perihelion distance - the orbit will be elliptical. For comparison, Mercury's never gets closer to the sun than about 61 times times the radius of the sun.

Re:Why does NASA not fund metalurgical research?

[Low Ranked Craig]

Jupiter would need to be about 75 times as massive to become a star...

Re:I thought they already knew why corona is hotte

[f3r]

from what I know, all that is based on heavy numerical simulations (prone to errors in the assumptions, lack of more thorough numerics, etc). The simulations are based on parameters determined from measurements made from distances longer than those that will be reached with this new probe, and on assumptions also extrapolated from everything observed "from here". Summed up, that explanation could be right or completely wrong. We have to measure more and from smaller distances.