NASA’s Parker Solar Probe successfully completed its first orbit of the Sun on January 19.
Illustration of NASA’s Parker Solar Probe approaching the Sun. Image credit: NASA / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Steve Gribben.
“It’s been an illuminating and fascinating first orbit,” said Dr. Andy Driesman, Parker Solar Probe project manager at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
“We’ve learned a lot about how Parker Solar Probe operates and reacts to the solar environment, and I’m proud to say the team’s projections have been very accurate.”
“We’ve always said that we don’t know what to expect until we look at the data,” added project Scientist Nour Raouafi, also from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.
“The data we have received hints at many new things that we’ve not seen before and at potential new discoveries.”
“Parker Solar Probe is delivering on the mission’s promise of revealing the mysteries of our Sun.”
The spacecraft has now begun the second of 24 planned orbits, on track for its second perihelion, or closest approach to the Sun, on April 4, 2019.
In preparation for the next encounter, the probe’s solid state recorder is being emptied of files that have already been delivered to Earth.
In addition, the spacecraft is receiving updated positional and navigation information (called ephemeris) and is being loaded with a new automated command sequence, which contains about one month’s worth of instructions.
Like the mission’s first perihelion in November 2018, Parker Solar Probe’s second perihelion in April will bring the spacecraft to a distance of about 15 million miles (24.1 million km) from the Sun — just over half the previous close solar approach record of about 27 million miles (43.5 million km) set by Helios 2 in 1976.
The spacecraft’s four instrument suites will help scientists begin to answer outstanding questions about the Sun’s fundamental physics — including how particles and solar material are accelerated out into space at such high speeds and why the Sun’s atmosphere, the corona, is so much hotter than the surface below.
