NASA has unveiled a beautiful photo of Venus taken by its Parker Solar Probe from 7,693 kilometers away.
The image, taken on July 11 last year, is an almost terrifying black-and-white image of the planet’s night side – the side facing away from the sun.
The bright edge around the edge of the planet is the night glow – light emitted by oxygen atoms high in the atmosphere that reappears in molecules.
NASA’s $ 1.5 billion Parker Solar Probe – focused on studying the sun and representing humanity’s first visit to a star – was launched in August 2018.
Venus plays a major role in Parker’s seven-year mission, as it harnesses the planet’s gravity during multiple flight connections.
This new image taken in July was taken during the third of the seven Venus pilots scheduled throughout Parker’s mission.
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe saw Venus up close when it flew through the planet in July 2020. Some of the features seen by scientists are shown in this annotated image. The dark spot that appears on the lower part of Venus is an object of the WISPR instrument
Parker successfully completed his fourth Venus bypass just last Saturday (February 20).
This new image from July was taken by the spacecraft’s WISPR instrument – Wide-field Imager for Parker Solar Probe.
WISPR is designed to take photos of the solar corona and inner heliosphere in visible light, as well as images of the solar wind and its structures as they approach and fly through the spacecraft.
The prominent dark feature in the center of the image is Aphrodite Terra, the largest highland region on the planet’s surface.
The function appears dark due to the lower temperature, about 85 ° F (30 ° C) cooler than the environment.
The aspect of the image surprised the team, according to Angelos Vourlidas, WISPR project scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland.
“WISPR was adjusted and tested for observations of visible light – we expected to see clouds, but the camera looked straight at the surface,” Vourlidas said.
Although the focus of Parker Solar Probe is on the sun, Venus plays a critical role in the mission. The spacecraft sweeps through Venus a total of seven times over the course of its seven-year mission. Pictured, artist’s impression of Parker and the Sun
This surprising observation sent the WISPR team back to the laboratory to measure the instrument’s sensitivity to infrared light.
If WISPR can indeed record near-infrared wavelengths of light, it will provide new opportunities to study dust around the sun and in the inner solar system.
If it cannot record extra infrared wavelengths, these images – which show signatures of features on the Venus surface – could reveal a previously unknown ‘window’ through the Venus atmosphere.
“Either way, there are some exciting scientific opportunities ahead of us,” Vourlidas said.
Parker’s main scientific goal is to detect the flow of energy and to understand and investigate the heating of the solar corona – the outer layer of the sun – which accelerates the solar wind.
Although Parker’s focus is on the sun, Venus plays a critical role in its seven-year mission that will last until 2025.
The spacecraft will sweep through Venus a total of seven times and use the planet’s gravity to bend the orbit of the spacecraft and reduce the orbital energy.
This Venus gravity aid causes Parker to fly closer and closer to the sun on his mission to study the dynamics of the solar wind near its source.
In its seven-year run, Parker makes up to 24 close approximations to the sun (known as a perihelion), with each closer than the previous (his seven approximations of Venus meanwhile vary and do not necessarily come closer) time).
At the nearest approach, Parker will be about 430,000 miles per hour around the sun and fast enough to get from Philadelphia to Washington, DC within a second.
Parker was launched on August 12, 2018 and uses Venus’ gravity to bend its orbit. With this gravity assistance, Parker can fly ever closer to the sun. Each new close approach is called a perihelion. The first Venus fly was on October 3, 2018 and the first perihelion arrived on November 6, 2018 (03:27 UTC), about 35.7 R from the sun. Rs stands for solar radius. 1 Rs is the distance from the center of the sun to its surface (about 432,000 miles or 696,000 kilometers)
It will sweep as close as 3.83 million miles to the solar surface, with the heat and radiation ‘like no spacecraft before it’, says NASA.
It is well within the orbit of Mercury and about seven times closer than any spacecraft has come before.
Parker uses a heat shield known as the Thermal Protection System, which has a diameter of 8 feet and a thickness of 4.5 centimeters.
While the front of the Parker Solar Probe sunshade is closest to the sun, it’s 1400 ° C (2,600 ° F), but the spacecraft’s charge is near room temperature, about 85 ° F.
The WISPR team captured more observations of Venus’ nightmare during Parker’s latest Venus flight event just five days ago.
On Saturday just after 20:05 GMT, Parker passed 2385 km above the surface as it bent around the planet, moving at about 25 kilometers per second.
Scientists from the mission team expect to receive and process the data for analysis by the end of April.
“We are really looking forward to these new images,” said planetary scientist Javier Peralta, who works on Akatsuki, the Japanese space probe studying the atmosphere of Venus.
“If WISPR can detect the thermal emissions from the surface of Venus and the night glow, probably of oxygen, to the limb of the planet, it could make valuable contributions to studies of the Venusian surface.”
The fourth Venus gravity assistance over the weekend proposes Parker for his eighth and ninth perihelions, scheduled for April 29 and August 9.
During each of these passes, Parker will break his own record if it comes about 6.5 million miles from the solar surface, about 1.9 million miles closer than the previous perihelion of 8.4 million miles on January 17th.
Launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida on August 12, 2018, just 78 days later the sun’s closest artificial object, breaking the record set by Helios 2 spacecraft in April 1976 (a joint venture of West Germany and NASA). .
The mission is named after Eugene Parker, an American sonastrophist at the University of Chicago – the first NASA mission named after a living individual.
In the 1950s, Parker proposed a number of concepts about how stars – including our sun – release energy.
He calls this cascade of energy the solar wind, and he describes a whole complex system of plasmas, magnetic fields and energetic particles that make up this phenomenon.
HOW WILL THE PARKER sin come so close to the sun?
According to NASA, the Parker Solar Probe mission requires 55 times more energy than would be needed to reach Mars.
It also launched a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy, one of the most powerful rockets in the world, with a third phase added.
But the trajectory and speed are critical to getting to the right track.
As the earth and everything on it move about 67,000 miles per hour in a direction that is lateral to the sun, vessels must be launched backwards to eliminate the lateral motion, NASA explains.
According to the space agency, the Parker probe will move past the sun, so it should remove about 53,000 miles per hour.
The Parker Solar Probe will swing a total of seven times around Venus, with each pass slowing it down and pushing ever closer to the sun. These orbits are shown in the animation above
It needs a boost from the powerful Delta IV rocket, and several gravity aides from Venus to slow it down.
The probe will rely on a series of gravitational aids from Venus to slow its lateral motion so that it can only get 3.8 million miles away from the solar surface.
“In this case, rather than accelerating the spacecraft, as in a typical gravity aid, Venus slows its lateral motion so that the spacecraft can get close to the sun,” NASA explains.
‘When it finally gets close, Parker Solar Probe will lose much of its lateral speed, but thanks to the gravity of the sun will gain a great deal of overall speed.
“Parker Solar Probe will pass 430,000 miles per hour past the sun.”
With its closest approach, it will come just 3.8 million miles from the solar surface, making it the only spacecraft ever so close.