NASA's Parker Solar Probe has flown past the sun, opening a plethora of research about the sun that scientists could conduct in the future, as reported first by Space.com.
On Tuesday, Sept. 6, at 2:04 a.m., the Parker Solar Probe passed within 5.3 million miles (8.5 million kilometers) from the sun's surface during its 13th perihelion or closest approach to the sun.
This perihelion occurs at a time when the sun has been extremely active, with a sunspot the size of Earth and recent geomagnetic storms and solar flare eruptions.
Although Parker hasn't yet observed this kind of behavior throughout its close encounters with the sun, researchers are hopeful that it will this time.
FILE IMAGE - OCTOBER 25: Astronomers at the Solar & Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) captured this image of a solar prominence erupting from the surface of the Sun on October 25, 2002. Two large prominences were spotted and one is shown here with the Earth in scale to demonstrate the immense size of this solar phenomenon.
The Sun is More Active Than Ever
Parker Solar Probe project scientist Nour Raouafi of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL), who oversees the mission, stated in a press release by NASA that no one has ever flown through a solar event so close to the sun like this before.
The sun was in solar minimum, an unproductive phase of the 11-year solar cycle, when Parker was launched in 2018. However, the sun is already more active than scientists had anticipated, and activity is rapidly rising back up to solar maximum, which is predicted to occur in 2025.
Parker still has 11 parhelia left in its mission, even after the current movement. Hence, astronomers are optimistic that some of them will coincide with the next solar outbursts as their frequency rises.
But this perihelion will become even more exciting as another space mission will join Parker to observe the sun and provide further data to scientists.
Parker will monitor the sun at the same time as Solar Orbiter, a joint NASA-ESA mission, but from a distance of 58.5 million miles (94.1 million kilometers), following the Solar Orbiter's flyby of Venus on Saturday, Sept. 3.
"By combining the data from multiple space missions and even ground observatories, we can understand the bigger picture," Raouafi said.
"In this case, with both Parker and Solar Orbiter observing the sun from different distances, we will be able to study the evolution of the solar wind, gathering data as it passes one spacecraft and then the other."
IN SPACE - OCTOBER 28: In this handout photo from the Solar & Heliospheric Observatory, a major solar eruption is shown in progress October 29, 2003. This X18 flare is the strongest flare since August 16, 1989 when an X20 flare occurred. A large coronal mass ejection has been hurled towards the Earth and could hit the Earth's magnetosphere by October 30.
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Written by Joaquin Victor Tacla
