NASA WANTS TO TOUCH THE SUN - BIG ANNOUNCEMENT AHEAD
NASA is getting ready to make a huge announcement about their first mission to touch the sun.
ASTRONAUTS WOULD FACE EXTREME TEMPERATURES AND RADIATION LEVELS
The agency is intending to send a spacecraft much closer to the sun than they have been able to do before. Astronauts will have to face radiation levels along with temperatures that are far more extreme than ever before.
During the press conference, which NASA is scheduled to hold on Wednesday, they will talk about the Solar Probe Plus; the conference will be streamed live on NASA Television along with shown on the website from 4 pm BST.
MISSION TO THE SUN BEGINS IN 2018 COLLECTING MECHANISM DATA OF CORONA
NASA have revealed that the spacecraft is going to set off for the sun during the summer of 2018 and it is going to collect data about the mechanisms that heat up the sun's corona, which is the outermost part of the atmosphere of the sun.
The corona is said to be many hundreds of times hotter than the surface of the sun, but no one knows why. The temperatures are said to reach around 500,000 degrees Celsius or even higher. It also lies behind the solar wind, which is a stream of constantly charged particles that impact the life on Earth.
SPACECRAFT WILL BE AROUND FOUR MILLION MILES FROM SUN SURFACE
NASA said that the spacecraft they are sending up would be placed in orbit around four million miles from the surface of the sun and it is going to have to deal with radiation and heat that no other spacecraft throughout history has had to deal with. It is going to be exploring the outer atmosphere of the sun along with making critical observations that should give some answers to question that are decades old about just how the physics of stars really work.
The data that comes from the exploration should be able to help with forecasting of big space weather events that may have an impact on life down on Earth along with astronauts and satellites out in space.
ASTRONAUTS PROTECTED BY CARBON COMPOSITE SHIELD
The spacecraft is going to have to be able to deal with temperatures that are about 1,400 degrees Celsius and NASA are planning to deal with these temperatures thanks to a carbon composite shield of 11.5cm in thickness.
The Solar Probe Plus conference is going to be held at the University of Chicago William Eckhardt Research Center Auditorium.
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