Welcome to NASA Science Live.
I'm your host, Joy Ng.
And today we will talk to NASA experts about the sun.
The most recent solar storms,
and how our Parker Solar Probe mission will make history
with its closest path to the sun.
This is your chance to interact with NASA experts
and have your questions answered in real time.
So be sure to send them in using the hashtag.
Ask NASA in the comments wherever you're watching.
In 2021,
NASA's Parker Solar Probe became the first spacecraft
to fly through the sun's upper atmosphere, known as the corona.
This was the first time any spacecraft had touched
a star, providing humanity with unprecedented observations.
Visiting the only star we can study up close now, Parker
is about to complete one of its most daring feats yet.
On December 24th, 2024, Parker Solar Probe will fly
just 3.83 million miles above the sun's surface.
If the distance between Earth and the sun was the length
of a football field, Parker would be around four yards
from the end zone at the closest approach.
The spacecraft will be hustling around the sun at around
430,000mph.
That's fast enough to get from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C.
in one second.
This makes Parker the fastest human made object in history,
and it's going to be an amazing achievement.
We're keeping an eye on the questions
pouring in online, and we'll bring them straight
to our expert live on air later on in the show.
We also have experts in the comments standing by
to answer you in real time.
So let's jump in.
With us now is Doctor Alex Young who is the associate director
for science communications in NASA heliophysics.
And Doctor Nour Rawafi, Parker Solar Probe project scientist
at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.
Thank you both for being here.
Thanks for having us.
Thank you for having us.
So can you start by explaining a little bit about your roles?
Alex, why don't you go first?
Yes, I am.
As you mentioned, the associate director
for science communication
in the Heliophysics Division at Goddard Space Flight Center.
I'm also a solar astrophysicist studying activity on the sun.
And many of the aspects that Parker Solar Probe
is now exploring in unique ways.
I'm Nour Rawafi
I'm also a solar astrophysicist
from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab.
I am the Parker Solar Probe project scientist,
and my primary role is the integrity
of the science of the mission, but also maximizing the science
return of the mission as much as possible.
Thank you both.
So let's get in today's main topic.
Parker Solar Probe I mentioned earlier that it's getting ready
to make its closest approach to the sun ever in history.
Can you explain?
You know, why are we doing this and what do we hope to learn?
A star like our sun is by nature
a very complex and dominant object.
Numerous
phenomena are so mystifying.
And just to give you a couple of examples.
The solar corona that is the outermost layer of the solar
atmosphere is over 300 times hotter than the solar surface.
That is mind boggling.
That boiling gas that is in the solar corona
obviously cannot stay static, and there is a constant flow
of charged particles that we call the solar wind.
It is constantly rising from that region to fill
the whole heliosphere.
And the mystery about it is that the particles rise
from a near static state close to the sun,
to be flying at hundreds of kilometers per second.
And we don't know what do they get the energy from?
And obviously, the sun is a magnetized star.
Every now and then
it tells us the violent side of a star through
big explosions like coronal mass ejections and flares.
Just to give you to put this,
the energy amount that the sun releases in minutes and hours.
One of the strong events can fulfill our energy needs
of the whole currency of civilization,
our current civilization for nearly 40,000 years.
And the sun does that in minutes to hours.
Along with this, this tremendous energy release.
There are particles that get accelerate
to almost the speed of light
and rendering them formidable hazard to humans in space,
to space equipment like the GPS and communications satellites.
And every now and then we see a show here around
us, like Aurora.
But let me tell you this, but this sort of probe
will help us address all these three phenomena,
and that's actually why we primarily build it.
But Parker Solar Probe is way more than that.
It is an exploration mission by excellence.
It is venturing
into a region of space that we never visited before.
And whatever observation we make is a potential discovery.
And that is exactly what we have learned from the data.
So Parker’s closest approach to
The front of the spacecraft will face temperatures
approaching 1800 degrees Fahrenheit, or 1000°C.
But the spacecraft's instruments will.
Behind the shield will be near room temperature at about 85°F.
Can you explain how that's possible?
Yes. So this is one of the aspects of Parker
that makes it an engineering marvel.
And, my colleague Nour here has something really special.
This is a piece of the heat shield that sits
in front of the spacecraft.
It's made of a carbon composite fiber.
And you can see it's fairly thick.
It sits in front and always faces the sun.
And it completely covers the back part of the spacecraft.
It casts a shadow over
the instruments at the back, except for one specific
piece left.
And that is one of the parts that, keeps this,
immense heat from damaging the instruments.
But in addition, engineers have created
a type of radiator that, it's a amazingly uses
only a gallon of distilled water.
And together that with the heat shield allows us to keep enough
heat away or siphon heat off of the spacecraft
to keep that nice, cozy room temperature back where this is
really important. Science instruments are.
Wow. That's incredible that it can be so close to the sun.
Yet we've developed
new technology to maintain a safe operating temperature.
So to celebrate this amazing feat,
we have a challenge for you.
You can join Parker's journey with a digital quest
of your own.
So starting today through December 24th, NASA will post
a daily puzzle on the NASA's on Facebook and X accounts.
Solve these puzzles to find secret NASA web pages
where you can claim your own custom 3.8 digital stickers.
Let's learn more.
NASA's Parker Solar Probe is about
to make history.
On December 24th.
It'll pass within 3.8
million miles of the sun's surface
while traveling faster than any human made object in history.
And we want you to join in on this historic event
each day from December 17th through 24th.
We'll hide a prize
on a secret web page and share clues
across social media to help you find it.
Solve the clues to win your prize,
but hurry and you can also claim glory.
Clues drop at noon eastern time each day, and at 9 p.m.
eastern, we'll share the leaderboard showing
who solved that day's puzzles the fastest.
Then, on December 27th, when Parker phones
home for the first time, letting us know
it's survived the sun's intense heat,
we'll release a final leaderboard
showing who solve the puzzles fastest overall.
Are you ready for the 3.8 challenge?
So Alex, Nour, are you ready?
I'm ready.
I just hope that,
I'm not a complete failure at all the puzzles, so I'm.
Well, it's a. Today's puzzle
has been released, so let's show that now.
The goal is to guess what this drawing is showing.
And the answer should be two words.
To find the secret web page, you just have to put the answer
at the end of the URL, which is go.nasa.gov/3.8 underscore.
And then the puzzle answer and the fastest
puzzle solvers can also compete for a space in our leaderboard.
So good luck to everyone.
And clues we posted on a NASA sun, Facebook and X accounts.
So I guess for you, Alex.
Yeah, I think I have a good idea.
If you have a good idea, don't
don't say the answer. Live on air.
But if you can guess, go.
But at the end of that URL you just saw.
Okay, so Parker has a total of three
planned orbits at this record breaking distance from the sun.
So my question to you two is,
you know, are these flybys occurring
during a specific period of activity for the sun?
So, we launched a sort of probe in the summer of 2018.
And back then the sun was at sort of minimum,
the minimum of the solar, solar cycle.
It was very quiet.
And if you think of it, emission that is going close
to a star where the medium is by nature very complex.
It was the best time, the perfect time to have Parker
Solar Probe fly close to the sun.
And the reason for that we will learn about the
the simplest state of the solar corona and the solar wind.
And as the solar activity rises, we will start,
learning about the complexity
that is built up, building up in the system.
And now we find ourselves
so fortunate to be at the solar maximum
when Parker Solar Probe
is hitting the closest approach ever to a star.
And we want the sun to give us the biggest show
it can do, when perhaps Parker Solar Probe is very close to it.
That's fascinating and amazing that the mission
had planned the timing of this with the sun's activity.
So one of the effects of the sun's,
I can actually add one thing.
I can actually add one thing to that.
One of the things that's fantastic about Parker
being such a robust spacecraft and the fact that
we're going to be getting data for many years to come is
we will have Parker over, a solar cycle.
And it is very important for solar science to study
various aspects of the sun, over
both the minimum and the maximum,
as well as the transitions between.
So this is really exciting.
That will be able to combine Parker's data
with the huge heliophysics, Observatory,
to have this unique perspective over an entire solar cycle.
So, next, whatever you speak, you
take it, and you're in my mind.
So, let me say.
Let me say this.
After six years, more than six years
of orbiting the sun very closely,
Parker Solar Probe and all the subsystem
are performing way better than we expected.
Also, the NASA the continuation of the mission
is another decision.
As Alex said, Parker Solar Probe is ready to go
for many years to come.
Yeah, it's amazing
that Parker is there right now during the active sun.
And for our viewers, watching one of the
you may have seen some of the visible effects
of the sun on Earth, which is the aurora.
And we've seen a lot of aurora this year, especially
in the lower parts in the US, which is not typical.
So can you explain what is an aurora
and why did it appear in places that it doesn't usually appear?
Yeah.
So, all of this material and magnetic field
in the form of the solar wind
or also the coronal mass ejections,
it comes through space and hits everything
and interacts with everything that's in its way.
And then
when the Earth is in its way, it interacts
with the Earth's magnetic field and jostles it like a bell.
And one of the things that that causes is it causes
particles both from the Earth itself, as well as from the sun,
to stream down the magnetic field
lines of the northern and southern poles of the Earth.
And when that happens, these particles
interact with our atmosphere, which is primarily
oxygen and nitrogen.
And so when these particles with a lot of energy, primarily
electrons, hit, oxygen, they create,
depending on how energetic they are
and where they are
in the atmosphere, they can either create
these beautiful greens
or sometimes these very vibrant reds.
And the nitrogen will create a blue, sometimes the teal.
And together, that is what's giving us
this really amazing rainbow of colors.
That's, producing these this amazing show
and one of the things that's been really special about
this year is we've actually had two solar storms,
that have caused Aurora, here at Earth.
One was in, the beginning of May
and one was in the beginning of October.
And both of those storms caused Aurora to be visible
down to the very bottom of the United States.
But the May storm was an especially strong storm.
In fact, we think it could be 100 to possibly 500 year event.
And that caused Aurora very close
to the, equator, which is extremely unheard of.
And it was a wide event, that millions and millions,
hopefully billions of people were able to see.
And, it may not happen again, but as North said, you know, I'm
hoping the sun, keeps up this activity
gives some excitement to Parker, and maybe we get
a little bit of that excitement here at Earth
and have some more spectacular light shows.
You know,
like a sort of folks is going to make history
on Christmas Eve of this year.
And when we talk about that time
around Christmas and the end of the year,
we are talking about gifts and presents,
and I'm hoping that the sun will give us the best gift ever.
That is one of the strongest explosions ever that went back.
A circle is very close to it
that will help us tremendously understand this, this event
and their complexity
and how they affect the medium goes through.
Many times I asked, I was asked about the Carrington event
that happened in 1859 that caused the strongest,
geomagnetic storm in recorded history.
And I'm actually of two mind, two minds about this.
The rational human being in me says, yeah,
that's actually can be very serious.
And let's not hope.
Hope for a hope one happening anytime soon.
But the scientist in me says, you know what?
Let's let's see the show. It's going to be amazing.
Yeah.
And you know, one of the things
that's really spectacular about Parker Solar Probe is,
for example, this May event which created this amazing
aurora, the, eruptions on the sun were not
the strongest ones we've had, and then some, to some degree,
the analysts predicted a smaller,
impact here at Earth, and we were all very much surprised.
And recent, research has shown that part of
that is due to certain aspects of the complexity
of the magnetic field within the CME
and how it wraps through the CME.
And it's very difficult to to measure that.
And right now
we typically can only measure that very close to Earth.
Parker Solar Probe can provide this incredible data
and an incredible detail not just of that magnetic field,
but that magnetic fields shortly after it has left the sun.
And this is such a game changer
to allow us to better understand these solar storms.
And part of the, benefit for that is someday
for us to be able to predict them on the same,
sort of the same scale of, what we do here on Earth.
Yeah.
And for
talking about gift giving,
I will have my fingers crossed for more Aurora
over Earth as well.
So for folks who do manage to spot auroras,
is there any way for people to let NASA know?
Yes, citizen science is a fantastic way.
And a colleague of ours, Elizabeth
McDonald, created something back in the previous solar cycle,
called Aurora source.
It allows people to report, their sighting of Aurora,
via Twitter or now called X.
And that information provides very unique data,
which gives us, detail on a much smaller,
smaller spatial scale of where these aurora occur,
which is something we don't actually normally have.
And so it's really an amazing opportunity
for everyone to share in the science
and provide this unique data for NASA, and our colleagues
to sort of understand this really complex, phenomena.
So to learn more, you can visit go
nasa.gov/citizen science.
So we have a lot of questions coming in online.
And remember you can submit yours
by commenting in the stream
wherever you're watching or by using the hashtag ask NASA.
So Alex and Nour let's jump in.
So our first question is from our Figaro on ECS.
And they ask how many minutes or hours of images and data
are we expecting to see?
So, for every orbit,
we bring down hundreds of gigabits of data.
So we have different types of data.
We have the imaging, but we have also the in-situ
that has magnetic fields, magnetic fields,
densities, temperatures, all that data down
that gathers when it is close to the sun.
We have to wait for it
until it is a little bit far away.
Then we can talk to the spacecraft
and bring it down.
So after this encounter that, that we are about to enter,
we have to wait for about three weeks.
That is a little bit after mid-January
when the geometry is favorable for data downlink,
and then we can start talking to the spacecraft
and break the data down.
Fantastic.
So we have a question on Twitch from volcanoes,
and they ask, how fast will the probe be traveling when
it passes that close to the sun due to gravity assist?
Wow. Well, it's it's going to be traveling
approximately 430,000mph.
To give, some perspective, if you were to travel from
Washington to Philadelphia on Parker Solar Probe,
you would make that trip in about a second.
So it's just phenomenal. And
it's it's just an amazing, amazing piece
of, of engineering again, special joy.
And I'm actually dream for bigger distances.
And, you know, I was like, like both of you.
I was born after 16, 1969 when we landed on a Neil
Armstrong and other folks on the moon.
And still, when I see it, it's really it's so, inspiring.
So, you know, it's a huge.
We are dreaming of
landing women for the first time
on the moon by the end of the decade,
and also return men to the moon as well.
So it will take them about 3 to 4 days to get there.
But if you pick a ride on Parker Solar Probe at that speed
when it is very close to the sun, it will take only
about half an hour to get from the Earth to the
what is extremely, extremely fast.
That's incredible.
So we have another question on YouTube from Astrakhan nine.
And the question is how much of the solar corona
heating is magnetic reconnection,
and what other processes contribute to the overall
coronal heating.
So magnetic reconnection
plays the big deal into the interior
because magnetic reconnection by nature, it releases,
you know,
energy, magnetic energy to the plasma
in the form of heat, but also speed as well.
But it also creates a lot of,
I mean,
a whole spectrum of weights,
and some of them that we call the alpha waves,
they would propagate very high into the solar corona
in the atmosphere.
Some of that gets reflected.
And when the the two counter propagating waves, couple,
they provide a cascade that will basically
bring the energy toward very, very small scales
where the particle can absorb them
and gets heated and accelerated along the way.
And that's actually
why at least one of the theories
that we are thinking
that is responsible for the heating
and the acceleration of the solar wind, and guess what?
Parker Solar Probe is actually guiding us toward
what might be the solution to that.
And magnetic reconnection is at the center.
Well, I can't wait till that day,
since I know it's a really it's been
one of the biggest mysteries around the sun.
So that's really exciting.
So next, I want to show a video captured by Parker Solar Probe,
in 2022, as Parker was making
its 13th orbit around the sun, it saw a big eruption
known as a coronal mass ejection bursting from the sun.
And not only did we see it, but we could actually hear as well.
So let's take a look and listen.
My question to you two is what are the streaks
we're seeing on screen?
So the sinks we are seeing
there are basically like a sort of probe.
When it is flying in space, it is constantly bombarded by dust.
And whenever you have
a dust particles that are hitting the spacecraft,
it creates debris of spacecraft material that is flying all
over the place.
And the cameras are actually imaging these debris,
and they can tell you when we launched the mission,
we were surprised that some of these images,
they are absolutely useless because they are so dominated
by districts.
I mean, you cannot see, you can only see streaks.
And, you know,
we know that we built
a spacecraft and it's returning data that is so exciting.
But we were so worried.
So how long the spacecraft can survive this?
But 66 more than six years after probe is so healthy.
It's doing so well.
And it's really so surprising to be a machine that
outperform even your imagination,
which is fascinating.
Yeah, I'm really glad you showed that, image.
That's one of my favorites.
But the thing that special for me
is actually only recently at a, science conference
when Nour presented it and then another colleague did.
That's the first time I've heard it at that conference.
I had seen the data
and seen the imagery, but I had never heard it before.
And Parker Solar Probe has also provided a lot of other data,
including some of these waves that Nour was talking about,
which we have now use sonification.
And it's it's really amazing not only to see the data,
but to hear it.
It's up
to Parker Solar Probe has been traveling
for about six years to it, to the sun.
What are some other interesting things Parker seen
on its journey?
Like, can I, can I?
Oh, sure.
You know, actually, there's a couple of things.
That particular video is one of them, related to
that, is of is,
some data showing a coronal mass ejection,
which is
passing by the spacecraft, but also clearing out the space,
clearing out all the particles, including the heavy
particles, basically providing a perfect vacuum.
And that's one of my favorite, types of data
and a really an amazing, observation.
And the other one that I'll bring up is Venus.
So, you know, Parker Solar Probe has used Venus on seven flybys
to use the it's used the gravity of gravity assist
to slow the spacecraft down
so they could get closer and closer.
But that was also a unique opportunity
to take data, observing the planet
and the whisper, instruments, which are those very
sensitive cameras with the imagery
you just saw, were able to, for the first time,
see through the, the atmosphere of the planet
to show, features on the surface below
in visible and, near infrared light.
And looking at that next to radar, those particular features
line right up from earlier observations many decades ago.
You know, when we got this
data from Venus that it's really these images are spectacular.
So the program we set up back then is basically
to look for clouds in the atmosphere of Venus.
So and when we saw these dark patches, we thought,
we thought yeah, these are images.
These are images of the clouds.
And we were kind of excited but we were nervous.
We are not Venus people.
So let's only to discover that, Japanese mission Akatsuki
almost have exactly the same image.
That was back even before we launched back from France.
It was kind of disappointing.
And they showed this exactly the same data that that we saw
at, at one of the seminars they gave.
And Tony told the story as I said it. Now.
But the folks who are Venus specialists here at the Johns
Hopkins Applied Physics Lab,
they were so excited about that data set.
And they obviously we gave them the data, they looked into it.
And guess what
they actually learned about the composition of rocks
on the surface of Venus.
And on
top of that, they discovered a new window
to study the, the, the surface of the planet,
like a sort of probe, now holds the shortest wavelength
thermal emission from the surface of Venus.
It's a record previous records.
They there have been about one micron and 1.58 micron.
Parker Solar Probe
with this new window holds the record of 0.75 micron.
And the future mission for Venus will actually exploit this
since humans you ask.
And then this is really goes
into the science of the mission and
from orbit one, when Parker Solar Probe
flew close to the sun,
we observed forwards
in the magnetic fields that we call them switchbacks.
Basically, the magnetic field would roll
all the way back to the sun and out again, forming a necessary.
And when we saw them the first time
and it was a Tuesday, and we were supposed to share
that data for the first time with the public on the Thursday
of the geomagnetic geo.
American Geophysical Union.
And for for the first time when we saw it,
we thought, yeah, there is something wrong with this.
And that was a really bad feeling.
You know, we have been waiting for this mission for 60 years.
And if the first thing you get is really a problem
with the instruments, that's pretty bad.
So it took us probably something like 15 minutes
to do some checks on the data and everything.
Check it out.
What we are seeing is something.
Can you and guess what these switchbacks that are
that are that observed in abundance are close to the sun.
They actually
actually guiding us toward understanding
what hits the corona and what's accelerate.
Sort of. Well, it's kind of fascinating.
It's really amazing.
So we have more questions coming up online.
So let's get to more of those now.
So if you are on X, how will the probe act
when sudden, when a sudden coronal mass ejection
or magnetic storm occurs during the flyby.
That's a that's a really great question.
Let me start by saying this one.
Parker Solar Probe is flying close to the sun.
We cannot talk to the spacecraft,
so it has to be 100% autonomous, meaning
it has to deal with any issue that that it might encounter.
And actually,
the autonomy system that is built on the spacecraft
can drive the vehicle for nearly two months
without any intervention from the ground.
And actually, we did that twice already.
Now, Parker Solar Probe is designed to fly through,
this big explosion that I've put in mass ejections.
And actually we flew through dozens of them and,
the one that we showed earlier,
actually, we see a tiny bit of momentum
transfer to the spacecraft, but it it's so low.
And Parker sort of obviously
dealt with it without any issues at all.
So that's why I said earlier the Sun, please do your best.
Give us
give us the strongest event you can do to deal with it.
A lot of viewers are very intrigued that Parker
Solar Probe
can get close to the sun without melting,
and I know we touched on it before, but
can you tell us a little more about the technology
that enables the spacecraft to get so close to our star?
Yeah, why don't you?
You wanted to talk about this.
I, I brought it up earlier, so why don't you go ahead?
Sure.
Obviously, Alex brought brought up the heat
shield earlier, which is?
I have a sample of it here.
So, and the heat
shield is basically what enabled the whole mission.
It's a piece of carbon foam that is four inch
and a half thick.
We have, a ceramic coating on top of it.
It's white
for a good reason, to reflect as much light as possible.
So when we when we designed the heat shield,
we designed it for temperatures that the
to withstand temperature of that any excess of 2500°F.
So I was surprised.
Actually the heat shield is cooler now
and we are expecting only temperature
of about 1800 degrees Fahrenheit when on December 24th,
on the backside of the heat shield, that is for an inch
and a half back, the temperature will.
It would be about 500 degrees, and about a yard later
it's almost room temperature.
And the heat
shield is basically what stands between the probe and the sun.
Everything has to fit within
the shadow cone of the heat shield
and to operate at room temperature,
except a couple of sensors that are electrostatic antenna.
And so, the solar wind instrument,
obviously Parker Solar Probe has the right
to wiggle a little bit like any, any spacecraft up there.
But the tolerance for us, it's
only for it's only a small fraction of a degree.
And to maintain the altitude of the spacecraft
we use for subsystems that together have to work together
to keep the spacecraft.
It was looking squarely at the sun.
If we use, momentum wheels, we use thrusters,
we use a single cell, camera that we call them.
Pull them the limp sensors.
I, we come to them in a minute.
And also we have, star trackers that are looking toward the
at the back of the spacecraft, looking at the sky
for the star field,
basically to tell the spacecraft where it is located
for the some of their sensors.
This basically will detect the edge of the sun
whenever Parker Solar Probe deviates a tiny bit.
And this will signal to send the signal to the computer
to start basically correcting the attitude of the spacecraft.
But all these four subsystems have to work together
to, to maintain it, because if we don't do
it, we can lose Parker Solar Probe in no time at all.
The environment is so harsh it is not forgiving at all.
And yeah, so far Parker Solar Probe is really duplicates off.
So Matthew on Facebook asks
how long will it take Parker Solar Probe to complete
the 22nd perihelion or the 22nd orbit around the sun?
Well, we I don't know about to enter
what we call the encounter,
which is the part of the, of the orbit
when Parker Solar Probe is below a quarter of a year,
and it's just a few days from us from that.
It takes about 11 days
to cross the sun from one side to the other side.
But when Parker Solar Probe is very close
to the perihelion, the closest approach to the sun,
it is zipping through longitudes.
It can cover, over 150 degree longitudes in a couple of days,
which is
which is fascinating. It's
that is fascinating.
So Victor Swenson on YouTube asks,
how is the probe protected from gamma rays
and what type of substrate is used on chips?
Go ahead.
One by four of a gamma rays.
And and, the intensity of gamma rays is not really that high.
And we don't have any specific shielding for it,
but we have, enough shielding in the,
in the spacecraft for radiation from the sun
because we want to protect our, our, electronics
and most of the electronics are actually within the bus,
that hexagonal, structure that is
in the back of the heated tool in the back of the spacecraft.
All the electronics are out there within that structure,
and we have enough shielding.
But also when we were designing the spacecraft,
we had to make sure that we don't need to overload
the spacecraft. That becomes too heavy.
So it's really a balance between the two
that the spacecraft is protected
And I could also add that, gamma rays on the sun.
That's something that I, studied,
primarily come from solar flares.
They're not as common.
And we've done a lot of studies
about sort of the background sun and the gamma rays,
for example, that are created in the core.
Never make it out because those are eventually, turned into,
the visible light, photons that we see here on Earth.
So gamma rays are not particularly intense
unless you're sitting right on top of a very large solar flare.
You don't have much to worry about.
Okay?
So a viewer on
Twitch asks, other than shielding,
what are some of the challenges
of navigating in the vacuum of space at temperatures?
Much warmer than a few degrees Kelvin?
So one one thing about
the medium the Parker Solar Probe is flying through,
and it is multi-million degree hot that we know it.
It's it's the corona in the solar wind.
But there is one aspect of it.
It's very tenuous.
The density is so low.
So when Parker is flying through it, the gas itself does
not really transfer that much heat to, to the spacecraft.
So that's why Parker Solar Probe,
we have only to protect it from the, the the radiation
that is coming from the sun.
That's the main, the main, the main reason
we want to protect it.
Obviously.
There is always risk that the spacecraft would
encounter issues
there, and, and we, we have seen it when, when,
when probe is around the sun,
for example, the star trackers, oftentimes
the they turn off, but they turn them.
The autonomy will turn them back on.
So again, we rely on the autonomy system
to guide the spacecraft when we can not talk to it.
It's we we have all sorts of, solution to almost all sorts
of problems that the probe can, can, can, can go through.
And so far everything was was still going fine.
And. Yeah.
And I'll, I'll add to that.
So Norris talking about how tenuous
the corona is,
this is a pretty, interesting thing
that we love to talk about because
it tells us about the difference between temperature and heat.
If you actually were to take a, a cube about a meter cube and,
and fill it with the corona, you would have maybe
just a few particles inside that box.
Moving around now, they're moving super fast,
which is they're moving, to give them a temperature
equivalent of many millions of degrees.
But because there's only a few, there's not enough particles
to really transfer any energy, which is the heat part.
And as he mentioned, it's really the,
the light radiation coming from the sun,
which is so incredibly intense, that we're concerned about.
A lot that I think, you know,
if there is one thing, just a small thing that,
I really want to point out before I forget that.
So, yeah, the focus is, on the sun, our star.
But the phenomena that we are studying here,
they are not unique to the sun.
We see them in billions and billions of stars
out there in the universe.
And basically, by having this close look at that star,
we will also learn about other stars in the universe
and in particular.
Now we are so interested to know if we are alone
in this universe.
Basically, we are looking for, for life elsewhere.
We want to understand how, Earth is really.
So, is it really so special that we are unique or we are?
And also whether the sun, can
I mean, then the sun can enable life elsewhere
in the solar system as well.
That's also another another aspect.
Yeah.
And this is one of the reasons why we study the sun.
The sun is the only star that we can treat as a laboratory.
It's the only star that we can see, in detail,
but we can actually go to and measure it directly.
And that's one of the reasons that I started studying
the sun is it's a laboratory in our solar system
that allows us to learn about all the other stars
in the universe, and how all those stars interact
with the the billions and billions of other planets
that may or may not be
like our own, planets in our solar system.
Exactly.
So Johnny on X asks,
how do you communicate with the probe at its
closest approach to the sun?
Yeah.
When we are very close to the sun.
Actually, we cannot talk to the spacecraft at all.
The spacecraft every now and then talk to us,
and it's so limited.
So, when we are going toward the sun
and and the way in
a certain point,
Parker Solar Probe will send us what we call the beacon tow.
And the beacon tone is really a very limited piece of telemetry
that tells us the overall state of the spacecraft.
And so far we got only green beacon tones, which is basically
a synonym of the spacecraft is a it's nominal, state.
And also on the outside where we get another one.
So for this encounter that is that we are about to enter
on December 22nd, we will get the first beacon tone.
And after the closest approach from December, the night of
December 20th 6 or 27, around midnight,
we will get the other beacon tone.
That's to tell us
how Parker Solar Probe did during this closest approach.
Other than that, when it is
during the encounter, we cannot talk to it at all.
We can not do anything to it at all.
But when it moves far away, then we can.
We have the, the high gain antenna.
We can actually oriented toward Earth.
We can talk to the spacecraft to get data up in,
get data from the spacecraft,
but also upload commands to the spacecraft.
Yeah, that's one of the things that makes,
these kind of missions
not just going around the sun so difficult.
And because it's far away, as they get farther away, also
the signals are weaker and it's made.
It makes it a challenge.
You know, flying space spacecraft is not easy.
And engineers are amazing.
And we are we are really thankful for the,
the DSN folks who are doing an amazing job.
Whenever, I mean, they bring us a lot of data,
I mean, communicating with the spacecraft, but also when,
when there are emergencies, they really step up and provide
provide us the support we need to to deal with them.
Yeah.
The DSM, by the way, it's Deep Space Network,
which is something we use for, you know, really
distant missions like Voyager for New Horizons.
And then some of the other solar missions, like,
stereo is Soho, for example.
Yeah, yeah.
So, I have another question, on X from Christopher Casey,
and Christopher asks,
Will solar wind ever be used to drive space ships?
Oh, oh, that's a good one.
That's a really good way to start.
I'll start with this one. Yeah.
So, well, there are something called solar sails.
So one of the, the, one of the ideas is with solar
sails actually using momentum,
from light or from particles,
but because there are spaces so big and there's so few,
these solar sails to be practical
have to be incredibly big.
Maybe the size of, many, many square kilometers.
But I will say I've, I've actually read some papers
about technology to create a giant solar sail,
to actually, use the solar wind to generate electricity.
Now, it's certainly not something that's practical and,
it for us right now, but it was a really interesting concept.
Yeah.
To that point.
And there are certain, companies out there
that are looking for
using harvesting, basically the gusts
that we are flying through,
and in particular, when you're flying
away from the sun to in particular for,
producing nuclear power or things like that.
So, there are ideas like that.
The technology might not be mature for now,
but that's really something
for the future that we have to look at for.
So Jaden on Twitch asks
which of the four instrument suites
will see the most intensive use this perihelion, or will
they all be equally used?
All of them?
Oh, all of them.
I mean, we have
we have the imager that is whisper that is that
that provides us with images like the ones we we saw before.
We have the field suite
that basically measure magnetic fields, electric
fields, densities, waves, fluctuations, radio emissions.
We have the suite, suite with measure of the solar wind
that are electrons, protons and, and helium ionized twice
that we call alphas.
And also we have the ESA's instrument suite that measure
this energetic particles that we talked about earlier.
Get that these are very high energy particles.
So all of them would work
together to provide us with basically a picture
for the whole medium we are flying through.
Yeah.
I mean, this is one of the important things
about science missions.
For most of them, you know, when we look at the universe,
we have to look at different,
different particles, different types of light.
We can't just look at a single thing
to get a bigger picture of what's really going on.
And this is especially
the case here for studying this, this very complex region.
We have to have a lot of different types
of information,
and all of those together are pieces of the puzzle.
Otherwise, you know, we're really not we're
really missing out on a whole lot of information.
So let me add to the to this.
We are so lucky to have launched Parker Solar Probe in 2018.
About a year,
a little over a year later, we launched Solar Orbiter,
which is the ESA, NASA mission,
and the year later we also got the largest solar
telescope in Hawaii also started operating.
So these three all together, they form really
probably together they form a golden era
to to study for the physics of to study the sun.
But let me add one thing.
I think it was the third orbit of Parker Solar Probe.
And when I put, an announcement out there basically soliciting
observatories to, to, to volunteer
their time to observe with us when Parker Solar Probe
is flying by the sun.
And my whole back then
was, yeah,
basically we'll have we get a handful of them to observe.
Well guess what?
We got over 50 observatories between space and Earth
that are that volunteered their time to observe with us.
And since then, for every orbit we have this campaign
that is ongoing.
My expectation for the closest approach would break that
record of 50 observatories. I'm hoping for more than that.
So we have an interesting question on Twitch.
What do we hope to learn about other stars in the process
of investigating our own sun?
Again, I'll
I'll start, one of the things that's that's important.
Well, a lot of the aspects of what Parker is
measuring are ubiquitous with other stars.
However, stars vary.
They vary in size, they vary in age.
And so some of the details are very different.
Many stars have, a wind like the solar wind,
we call them stellar winds. There are some that do not.
There are some that have incredibly violent
stellar winds.
But one of the things that I think is for me, me
personally, I think is one of the most critical ideas
is better understanding, magnetic reconnection.
Magnetic reconnection is the way that we know of
that nature is able to convert magnetic fields into energy.
Magnetic fields contain energy, but converting that
into energy, that nature can actually utilize
is is is quite difficult and quite complicated.
But it happens all through the universe.
It happens around the Earth and its magnetosphere,
which is, the reason why we launch the, the,
Magnetosphere Multiscale Mission, or Ms..
It happens at the sun with things like the solar wind,
with things like coronal mass ejections, with solar flares.
But it also happens around black holes.
It happens around,
different star systems that eventually become
types of supernova.
So it's really important.
It happens everywhere on different scales.
And that's one of the reasons that what we're learning
from Parker Solar Probe is so critical for understanding
fundamental physics across the entire universe.
If I add
something to that and Alex basically said he thought so.
I think one of the top questions
that in the minds of everybody out there, I mean,
is basically whether we are special
in the whole universe, whether we are unique,
and if we are, we are we are not unique.
How how life can develop around other stars.
And we have our sun, which is just in our neighborhood here.
We want to understand how it shapes
its its, star bubble that we call the heliosphere
and how it really life on Earth, you know, how did that.
But more than that,
we recently
we we launched in
another lesson, another mission that is the Europa Clipper
to study the, Europa moon that is one of the moons
of, out there that has the potential to,
to have, an ocean before the, the below the,
the ice and might it actually might have life.
And pretty soon
we will launch another exciting mission, dragonfly.
It will go to Titan, that is a moon of Saturn.
And that is going really
to look at chemistry, to look at different aspects
that might be relevant to life there.
Basically, we started looking at signature of life as well.
So it comes to, at the end,
how the sun interacts with its planetary system
and where it, it can potentially kick, kick life,
kick like the we know we are here on earth.
We know that's for sure.
And it's the only place on the universe
we know that is life and that is us.
And and, but also we want to understand that spirit.
And again,
what we learn from Parker Solar Probe
and other mission is so critical to achieve the.
So Rick Weber on X asks,
what is the most perplexing question about our sun
that NASA would like to answer through this probe?
That's a tough that well, so many of them.
It's not that there is no surface of them.
You know what?
I would start with the interior and remove out.
So if I came to you for a first of all, we have
absolutely no idea how the core of the sun itself works.
We know that our thermal
nuclear reactions that are going there,
and that's actually what produces
all the energy that the sun uses to,
to do everything in the solar system.
But if you move, above,
we also know that all
the magnetic fields that we are talking about,
they are actually generated in the interior of the sun.
And the funny thing is that the auto generated
in a cyclic fashion,
we have what we call the solar cycle that is 11 years long.
We go from a period when the sun is pretty quite like 2018,
when we lost Parker Solar Probe to a maximum,
when the sun is very active like it is now.
And when we move again to a period of minimum again.
And this is not all the sun, every now and then,
every about 200 years of 300 years,
we go through an extended period of tranquility, like it's like
the mother minimum that occurred in the 17, 1617 hundreds.
And when it goes very far right there, it affects it's
the our environment, for example, really big star
like the the mini ice ice age that
occurred in 1645, 17, 15.
Actually the sun at that time was very, very quiet.
So this variability of the sun, it's all driven
by that magnetic field
that is generating the interior and rises up to the atmosphere
and do all these phenomena that we we got to understand other.
Yeah.
And so this process that, Nour is referring to,
we call it a solar dynamo.
And it's a very important physical process.
In fact, the, the, a magnetic field of the Earth is generated
in a very similar way.
The Earth is, has a liquid, a metallic core.
So any object that's liquid or some sort of,
substance like the sun is made up of, called a plasma.
These are have the properties of liquids and solids,
but they are electromagnetic in nature.
They respond to electricity, magnetism.
And when they spin, they don't spin equally.
Just like the planet Jupiter or Saturn,
which is makes those striations in it.
And that causes that produces this magnetic field,
this dynamo.
And it's incredibly complicated.
And right now we have computer models that can
somewhat produce, what we see with the sun,
but we can't quite figure out, for example, why is it 11 years?
Why is it not, you know, 15 years?
We see these cycles
on other stars and they have different links.
So, this is one of the key pieces
to the sort of fundamental nature of a star of our star
in particular, that we do not fully understand.
And we have a long way to go.
Maybe once we understand it, we might be able to make real,
robust predictions of the solar cycle.
You know, the next solar cycle. Will it be big?
Will it be small?
Will it be longer or shorter?
That would be part of the goal of that.
But this is just a huge outstanding problem.
That that will probably be one of the biggest discoveries,
you know, if that is solved in our lifetime.
And that connects to all of the things that are happening
at the surface and in the corona,
which are what we're learning about from Parker Solar Probe.
So talking about the atmosphere of the sun and the corona,
we have all this activity that we talk about like flares
and promotes.
And by the way, we oftentime we talk only about the big ones,
but it's really a whole spectrum.
They occur at all scales
and even the smaller ones that are extremely important.
Now, well,
they are the drivers of space weather and that we, we see here
on our environment every now and then.
And we need really to, to aim for, reliable
predictions of what the sun is about to do at any time,
space with the our prediction capabilities of space
weather out of both
may be 50 years behind the prediction of weather on Earth,
but we are getting there.
So at a certain point,
we will be able
to predict the space weather like we predict weather.
But let me say this often times when we talk about
the solar activity and what it does to our environment,
we kind of give in giving it, give it a meaning negative
meaning that it's really hard.
It is really sad. It is, you know, gloomy. And
guess what?
Without that activity, we would not exist.
That activity is really necessary for life to kick,
to kick off whenever it has to kick off from the star.
So in a way, the sun can
is really our reason to exist,
but it can also affect us in in, in adverse ways.
So we have to find a way how to live with it in harmony.
And the best way is to understand it
and to understand it
through missions like Parker Solar Probe.
All right.
So we have time for one final question,
and this is for both of you.
Can you quickly tell me what advice do you have
for viewers who might be interested
in helping NASA study the Sun?
Well,
I would say one way to to really help
Dasa would be to participate in citizen science.
You know, citizen science,
we can look at everything from extra,
you know, extrasolar planets to,
aurora, to solar flares.
They're all sorts of different, aspects of Earth
and space science that NASA studies.
And there are huge number of citizen science projects.
All of them provide data that is that is really important
and in many ways critical for NASA
and something that we could never get on our own.
And if you can, if you participate,
you two will be a scientist and helping us to discover
and understand the world we live in.
So to everybody out there,
and I'm mainly addressing the younger generations
that are coming from babies all the way to the students.
If you think that, the Parker Solar Probe is very complex
or James Webb is very complex, guess what?
Now we are getting we are looking for missions
that are we way more complex than that.
If you think of, for example, for the sun,
the goal is no longer to launch a single spacecraft.
We're aiming to launch constellations.
And when we are talking about constellation,
I don't know how many birds we are talking about.
And this is really all up to you to do it.
So my my advice to everybody out there be,
be curious, be bold, be adventurous.
And guess what?
We don't only need engineers and scientists,
we need all sorts of, of knowledge.
We need scientists.
We need engineers. We need,
financial people.
We need lawyers, lawyers, a lawyer, a doctor.
We need everything. Yeah.
We need. Yeah.
You cannot imagine.
To build a mission so complex.
You need thousands of people to build it.
It's not really only
the couple of us who are speaking here
who basically, came together and put it together.
It's really
take an army to build a mission, like personal property.
Yeah.
Every single person is, is really critical.
And it is.
It takes a team, and that it will always be that way.
So yeah, that is great advice.
Thank you both so much for joining us to discuss
this incredibly important and interesting topic.
Thanks for having us.
And thank you to everyone watching online.
To stay updated on Sun Science, follow NASA
Sun Science on Facebook and NASA sun on X.
We'll be sharing updates on those channels,
as well as NASA's website about Parker Solar Probe closest
approach to the sun, so stay tuned.
Another way
you can participate in NASA Sun Science
is through our puzzle quest.
As we mentioned earlier, today is the start of a 3.8 quest,
and we're challenging you
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Thank you so much and see you next time!