Plan To Send A Probe To The Sun

The results from this one will be very interesting. As much as we think we know about the make up of the sun and how it functions, if this mission is successful we may change the way we look at space weather and solar influences on the earth.

We have all been saying for a long time ‘why don’t they send a probe to the Sun’ and they have been working on it for over 30 years and now we have the technology.

If you ask me all they had to do was go up at night.. (An oldie but a goodie)

Hopefully the probe will also be used for a near Mercury flyby and get more data on Mercury than we have ever had as well since it will by going within the orbit of Mercury.

“The spacecraft will go close enough to the sun to watch the solar wind speed up from subsonic to supersonic, and it will fly though the birthplace of the highest energy solar particles.

But as one article states

And, as with all missions of discovery, Solar Probe is likely to raise more questions than it answers.”

And the more questions we ask the more we learn.

Source

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[edit on 6-5-2008 by Jbird]

Good find; So the craft will get close to the corona of our Sun. I hope the heat shield will work according to their calculations. Hope to get more details about this project.

NASA calls on APL to send a probe to the sun

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory is sending a spacecraft closer to the sun than any probe has ever gone - and what it finds could revolutionize what we know about our star and the solar wind that influences everything in our solar system.

APL will design and build the spacecraft, on a schedule to launch in 2015. The compact, solar-powered probe would weigh about 1,000 pounds; preliminary designs include a 9-foot-diameter, 6-inch-thick, carbon-foam-filled solar shield atop the spacecraft body. Two sets of solar arrays would retract or extend as the spacecraft swings toward or away from the sun during several loops around the inner solar system, making sure the panels stay at proper temperatures and power levels. At its closest passes the spacecraft must survive solar intensity more than 500 times what spacecraft experience while orbiting Earth.

Source

[edit on 6-5-2008 by Enceladus]

I just hope the first thing they discover isn’t that the sun and its surrounds is not considerably hotter than they had anticipated. Or that the solar wind isn’t stronger than they had allowed. That would make for a very short mission.
Something the article doesn’t mention is when it is done will it be plunged into the Sun to try and get readings from as close as possible? I wonder just how close they can get it before burn up?