Florida, August 12, 2018 (WAL) – The US space agency (NASA) on Sunday, a spacecraft will approach the sun in an unprecedented manner.
The Barker Solar Probe was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, early this morning on a mission that would reach the vehicle near the outer atmosphere of the sun, only 6 million kilometers from the surface of the sun.
The nearest sun was already accessible; it was on the Helios 2 probe, which in 1976 reached 43 million kilometers from the surface of the sun.
For comparison, the average distance between the sun and the earth is about 150 million kilometers.
The vehicle, protected by a new thermal shield, will fly over Venus in October, with its first solar encounter in November, and in total, the vehicle will approach 24 times from the sun in the next 7 years.
Thousands of spectators gathered at the launch site, including astrophysicist Eugene Parker, 91, who was named the spacecraft, and Parker was the first to announce the existence of “solar wind” 60 years ago.
The $ 1.5 billion project is the first major mission under NASA’s “Living with a Star” program. (And Florida) t
