NASA Science Live: Parker Solar Probe Nears Historic Close Encounter with the Sun [Episode 61]

Some records are made for breaking! Say hello to the fastest-moving human-made object, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe. On a mission to “touch” the Sun, this spacecraft is set to make history on Dec. 24, 2024, by making its closest dive through the Sun’s upper atmosphere, known as the corona. Join NASA experts live on Tuesday, Dec. 17, at 3 p.m. ET as they take your questions about the mission, the currently high activity phase of the Sun, and more. Submit questions using #askNASA.

What is said in the film

Welcome to NASA Science Live. I'm your host, Joy Ng. And today we will talk to NASA experts about the sun. The most recent solar storms, and how our Parker Solar Probe mission will make history with its closest path to the sun. This is your chance to interact with NASA experts and have your questions answered in real time.

So be sure to send them in using the hashtag. Ask NASA in the comments wherever you're watching. In 2021, NASA's Parker Solar Probe became the first spacecraft to fly through the sun's upper atmosphere, known as the corona. This was the first time any spacecraft had touched a star, providing humanity with unprecedented observations. Visiting the only star we can study up close now, Parker is about to complete one of its most daring feats yet.

On December 24th, 2024, Parker Solar Probe will fly just 3. 83 million miles above the sun's surface. If the distance between Earth and the sun was the length of a football field, Parker would be around four yards from the end zone at the closest approach. The spacecraft will be hustling around the sun at around 430,000mph. That's fast enough to get from Philadelphia to Washington, D.

C. in one second. This makes Parker the fastest human made object in history, and it's going to be an amazing achievement. We're keeping an eye on the questions pouring in online, and we'll bring them straight to our expert live on air later on in the show. We also have experts in the comments standing by to answer you in real time.

So let's jump in. With us now is Doctor Alex Young who is the associate director for science communications in NASA heliophysics. And Doctor Nour Rawafi, Parker Solar Probe project scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Thank you both for being here. Thanks for having us.

Thank you for having us. So can you start by explaining a little bit about your roles? Alex, why don't you go first? Yes, I am. As you mentioned, the associate director for science communication in the Heliophysics Division at Goddard Space Flight Center.

I'm also a solar astrophysicist studying activity on the sun. And many of the aspects that Parker Solar Probe is now exploring in unique ways. I'm Nour Rawafi I'm also a solar astrophysicist from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. I am the Parker Solar Probe project scientist, and my primary role is the integrity of the science of the mission, but also maximizing the science return of the mission as much as possible. Thank you both.

So let's get in today's main topic. Parker Solar Probe I mentioned earlier that it's getting ready to make its closest approach to the sun ever in history. Can you explain? You know, why are we doing this and what do we hope to learn? A star like our sun is by nature a very complex and dominant object.

Numerous phenomena are so mystifying. And just to give you a couple of examples. The solar corona that is the outermost layer of the solar atmosphere is over 300 times hotter than the solar surface. That is mind boggling. That boiling gas that is in the solar corona obviously cannot stay static, and there is a constant flow of charged particles that we call the solar wind.

It is constantly rising from that region to fill the whole heliosphere. And the mystery about it is that the particles rise from a near static state close to the sun, to be flying at hundreds of kilometers per second. And we don't know what do they get the energy from? And obviously, the sun is a magnetized star. Every now and then it tells us the violent side of a star through big explosions like coronal mass ejections and flares.

Just to give you to put this, the energy amount that the sun releases in minutes and hours. One of the strong events can fulfill our energy needs of the whole currency of civilization, our current civilization for nearly 40,000 years. And the sun does that in minutes to hours. Along with this, this tremendous energy release. There are particles that get accelerate to almost the speed of light and rendering them formidable hazard to humans in space, to space equipment like the GPS and communications satellites.

And every now and then we see a show here around us, like Aurora. But let me tell you this, but this sort of probe will help us address all these three phenomena, and that's actually why we primarily build it. But Parker Solar Probe is way more than that. It is an exploration mission by excellence. It is venturing into a region of space that we never visited before.

And whatever observation we make is a potential discovery. And that is exactly what we have learned from the data. So Parker’s closest approach to The front of the spacecraft will face temperatures approaching 1800 degrees Fahrenheit, or 1000°C. But the spacecraft's instruments will. Behind the shield will be near room temperature at about 85°F.

Can you explain how that's possible? Yes. So this is one of the aspects of Parker that makes it an engineering marvel. And, my colleague Nour here has something really special. This is a piece of the heat shield that sits in front of the spacecraft.

It's made of a carbon composite fiber. And you can see it's fairly thick. It sits in front and always faces the sun. And it completely covers the back part of the spacecraft. It casts a shadow over the instruments at the back, except for one specific piece left.

And that is one of the parts that, keeps this, immense heat from damaging the instruments. But in addition, engineers have created a type of radiator that, it's a amazingly uses only a gallon of distilled water. And together that with the heat shield allows us to keep enough heat away or siphon heat off of the spacecraft to keep that nice, cozy room temperature back where this is really important. Science instruments are. Wow.

That's incredible that it can be so close to the sun. Yet we've developed new technology to maintain a safe operating temperature. So to celebrate this amazing feat, we have a challenge for you. You can join Parker's journey with a digital quest of your own. So starting today through December 24th, NASA will post a daily puzzle on the NASA's on Facebook and X accounts.

Solve these puzzles to find secret NASA web pages where you can claim your own custom 3. 8 digital stickers. Let's learn more. NASA's Parker Solar Probe is about to make history. On December 24th.

It'll pass within 3. 8 million miles of the sun's surface while traveling faster than any human made object in history. And we want you to join in on this historic event each day from December 17th through 24th. We'll hide a prize on a secret web page and share clues across social media to help you find it. Solve the clues to win your prize, but hurry and you can also claim glory.

Clues drop at noon eastern time each day, and at 9 p. m. eastern, we'll share the leaderboard showing who solved that day's puzzles the fastest. Then, on December 27th, when Parker phones home for the first time, letting us know it's survived the sun's intense heat, we'll release a final leaderboard showing who solve the puzzles fastest overall. Are you ready for the 3.

8 challenge? So Alex, Nour, are you ready? I'm ready. I just hope that, I'm not a complete failure at all the puzzles, so I'm. Well, it's a.

Today's puzzle has been released, so let's show that now. The goal is to guess what this drawing is showing. And the answer should be two words. To find the secret web page, you just have to put the answer at the end of the URL, which is go. nasa.

gov/3. 8 underscore. And then the puzzle answer and the fastest puzzle solvers can also compete for a space in our leaderboard. So good luck to everyone. And clues we posted on a NASA sun, Facebook and X accounts.

So I guess for you, Alex. Yeah, I think I have a good idea. If you have a good idea, don't don't say the answer. Live on air. But if you can guess, go.

But at the end of that URL you just saw. Okay, so Parker has a total of three planned orbits at this record breaking distance from the sun. So my question to you two is, you know, are these flybys occurring during a specific period of activity for the sun? So, we launched a sort of probe in the summer of 2018. And back then the sun was at sort of minimum, the minimum of the solar, solar cycle.

It was very quiet. And if you think of it, emission that is going close to a star where the medium is by nature very complex. It was the best time, the perfect time to have Parker Solar Probe fly close to the sun. And the reason for that we will learn about the the simplest state of the solar corona and the solar wind. And as the solar activity rises, we will start, learning about the complexity that is built up, building up in the system.

And now we find ourselves so fortunate to be at the solar maximum when Parker Solar Probe is hitting the closest approach ever to a star. And we want the sun to give us the biggest show it can do, when perhaps Parker Solar Probe is very close to it. That's fascinating and amazing that the mission had planned the timing of this with the sun's activity. So one of the effects of the sun's, I can actually add one thing. I can actually add one thing to that.

One of the things that's fantastic about Parker being such a robust spacecraft and the fact that we're going to be getting data for many years to come is we will have Parker over, a solar cycle. And it is very important for solar science to study various aspects of the sun, over both the minimum and the maximum, as well as the transitions between. So this is really exciting. That will be able to combine Parker's data with the huge heliophysics, Observatory, to have this unique perspective over an entire solar cycle. So, next, whatever you speak, you take it, and you're in my mind.

So, let me say. Let me say this. After six years, more than six years of orbiting the sun very closely, Parker Solar Probe and all the subsystem are performing way better than we expected. Also, the NASA the continuation of the mission is another decision. As Alex said, Parker Solar Probe is ready to go for many years to come.

Yeah, it's amazing that Parker is there right now during the active sun. And for our viewers, watching one of the you may have seen some of the visible effects of the sun on Earth, which is the aurora. And we've seen a lot of aurora this year, especially in the lower parts in the US, which is not typical. So can you explain what is an aurora and why did it appear in places that it doesn't usually appear? Yeah.

So, all of this material and magnetic field in the form of the solar wind or also the coronal mass ejections, it comes through space and hits everything and interacts with everything that's in its way. And then when the Earth is in its way, it interacts with the Earth's magnetic field and jostles it like a bell. And one of the things that that causes is it causes particles both from the Earth itself, as well as from the sun, to stream down the magnetic field lines of the northern and southern poles of the Earth. And when that happens, these particles interact with our atmosphere, which is primarily oxygen and nitrogen. And so when these particles with a lot of energy, primarily electrons, hit, oxygen, they create, depending on how energetic they are and where they are in the atmosphere, they can either create these beautiful greens or sometimes these very vibrant reds.

And the nitrogen will create a blue, sometimes the teal. And together, that is what's giving us this really amazing rainbow of colors. That's, producing these this amazing show and one of the things that's been really special about this year is we've actually had two solar storms, that have caused Aurora, here at Earth. One was in, the beginning of May and one was in the beginning of October. And both of those storms caused Aurora to be visible down to the very bottom of the United States.

But the May storm was an especially strong storm. In fact, we think it could be 100 to possibly 500 year event. And that caused Aurora very close to the, equator, which is extremely unheard of. And it was a wide event, that millions and millions, hopefully billions of people were able to see. And, it may not happen again, but as North said, you know, I'm hoping the sun, keeps up this activity gives some excitement to Parker, and maybe we get a little bit of that excitement here at Earth and have some more spectacular light shows.

You know, like a sort of folks is going to make history on Christmas Eve of this year. And when we talk about that time around Christmas and the end of the year, we are talking about gifts and presents, and I'm hoping that the sun will give us the best gift ever. That is one of the strongest explosions ever that went back. A circle is very close to it that will help us tremendously understand this, this event and their complexity and how they affect the medium goes through. Many times I asked, I was asked about the Carrington event that happened in 1859 that caused the strongest, geomagnetic storm in recorded history.

And I'm actually of two mind, two minds about this. The rational human being in me says, yeah, that's actually can be very serious. And let's not hope. Hope for a hope one happening anytime soon. But the scientist in me says, you know what?

Let's let's see the show. It's going to be amazing. Yeah. And you know, one of the things that's really spectacular about Parker Solar Probe is, for example, this May event which created this amazing aurora, the, eruptions on the sun were not the strongest ones we've had, and then some, to some degree, the analysts predicted a smaller, impact here at Earth, and we were all very much surprised. And recent, research has shown that part of that is due to certain aspects of the complexity of the magnetic field within the CME and how it wraps through the CME.

And it's very difficult to to measure that. And right now we typically can only measure that very close to Earth. Parker Solar Probe can provide this incredible data and an incredible detail not just of that magnetic field, but that magnetic fields shortly after it has left the sun. And this is such a game changer to allow us to better understand these solar storms. And part of the, benefit for that is someday for us to be able to predict them on the same, sort of the same scale of, what we do here on Earth.

Yeah. And for talking about gift giving, I will have my fingers crossed for more Aurora over Earth as well. So for folks who do manage to spot auroras, is there any way for people to let NASA know? Yes, citizen science is a fantastic way. And a colleague of ours, Elizabeth McDonald, created something back in the previous solar cycle, called Aurora source.

It allows people to report, their sighting of Aurora, via Twitter or now called X. And that information provides very unique data, which gives us, detail on a much smaller, smaller spatial scale of where these aurora occur, which is something we don't actually normally have. And so it's really an amazing opportunity for everyone to share in the science and provide this unique data for NASA, and our colleagues to sort of understand this really complex, phenomena. So to learn more, you can visit go nasa. gov/citizen science.

So we have a lot of questions coming in online. And remember you can submit yours by commenting in the stream wherever you're watching or by using the hashtag ask NASA. So Alex and Nour let's jump in. So our first question is from our Figaro on ECS. And they ask how many minutes or hours of images and data are we expecting to see?

So, for every orbit, we bring down hundreds of gigabits of data. So we have different types of data. We have the imaging, but we have also the in-situ that has magnetic fields, magnetic fields, densities, temperatures, all that data down that gathers when it is close to the sun. We have to wait for it until it is a little bit far away. Then we can talk to the spacecraft and bring it down.

So after this encounter that, that we are about to enter, we have to wait for about three weeks. That is a little bit after mid-January when the geometry is favorable for data downlink, and then we can start talking to the spacecraft and break the data down. Fantastic. So we have a question on Twitch from volcanoes, and they ask, how fast will the probe be traveling when it passes that close to the sun due to gravity assist? Wow.

Well, it's it's going to be traveling approximately 430,000mph. To give, some perspective, if you were to travel from Washington to Philadelphia on Parker Solar Probe, you would make that trip in about a second. So it's just phenomenal. And it's it's just an amazing, amazing piece of, of engineering again, special joy. And I'm actually dream for bigger distances.

And, you know, I was like, like both of you. I was born after 16, 1969 when we landed on a Neil Armstrong and other folks on the moon. And still, when I see it, it's really it's so, inspiring. So, you know, it's a huge. We are dreaming of landing women for the first time on the moon by the end of the decade, and also return men to the moon as well.

So it will take them about 3 to 4 days to get there. But if you pick a ride on Parker Solar Probe at that speed when it is very close to the sun, it will take only about half an hour to get from the Earth to the what is extremely, extremely fast. That's incredible. So we have another question on YouTube from Astrakhan nine. And the question is how much of the solar corona heating is magnetic reconnection, and what other processes contribute to the overall coronal heating.

So magnetic reconnection plays the big deal into the interior because magnetic reconnection by nature, it releases, you know, energy, magnetic energy to the plasma in the form of heat, but also speed as well. But it also creates a lot of, I mean, a whole spectrum of weights, and some of them that we call the alpha waves, they would propagate very high into the solar corona in the atmosphere. Some of that gets reflected. And when the the two counter propagating waves, couple, they provide a cascade that will basically bring the energy toward very, very small scales where the particle can absorb them and gets heated and accelerated along the way. And that's actually why at least one of the theories that we are thinking that is responsible for the heating and the acceleration of the solar wind, and guess what?

Parker Solar Probe is actually guiding us toward what might be the solution to that. And magnetic reconnection is at the center. Well, I can't wait till that day, since I know it's a really it's been one of the biggest mysteries around the sun. So that's really exciting. So next, I want to show a video captured by Parker Solar Probe, in 2022, as Parker was making its 13th orbit around the sun, it saw a big eruption known as a coronal mass ejection bursting from the sun.

And not only did we see it, but we could actually hear as well. So let's take a look and listen. My question to you two is what are the streaks we're seeing on screen? So the sinks we are seeing there are basically like a sort of probe. When it is flying in space, it is constantly bombarded by dust.

And whenever you have a dust particles that are hitting the spacecraft, it creates debris of spacecraft material that is flying all over the place. And the cameras are actually imaging these debris, and they can tell you when we launched the mission, we were surprised that some of these images, they are absolutely useless because they are so dominated by districts. I mean, you cannot see, you can only see streaks. And, you know, we know that we built a spacecraft and it's returning data that is so exciting. But we were so worried.

So how long the spacecraft can survive this? But 66 more than six years after probe is so healthy. It's doing so well. And it's really so surprising to be a machine that outperform even your imagination, which is fascinating. Yeah, I'm really glad you showed that, image.

That's one of my favorites. But the thing that special for me is actually only recently at a, science conference when Nour presented it and then another colleague did. That's the first time I've heard it at that conference. I had seen the data and seen the imagery, but I had never heard it before. And Parker Solar Probe has also provided a lot of other data, including some of these waves that Nour was talking about, which we have now use sonification.

And it's it's really amazing not only to see the data, but to hear it. It's up to Parker Solar Probe has been traveling for about six years to it, to the sun. What are some other interesting things Parker seen on its journey? Like, can I, can I? Oh, sure.

You know, actually, there's a couple of things. That particular video is one of them, related to that, is of is, some data showing a coronal mass ejection, which is passing by the spacecraft, but also clearing out the space, clearing out all the particles, including the heavy particles, basically providing a perfect vacuum. And that's one of my favorite, types of data and a really an amazing, observation. And the other one that I'll bring up is Venus. So, you know, Parker Solar Probe has used Venus on seven flybys to use the it's used the gravity of gravity assist to slow the spacecraft down so they could get closer and closer.

But that was also a unique opportunity to take data, observing the planet and the whisper, instruments, which are those very sensitive cameras with the imagery you just saw, were able to, for the first time, see through the, the atmosphere of the planet to show, features on the surface below in visible and, near infrared light. And looking at that next to radar, those particular features line right up from earlier observations many decades ago. You know, when we got this data from Venus that it's really these images are spectacular. So the program we set up back then is basically to look for clouds in the atmosphere of Venus. So and when we saw these dark patches, we thought, we thought yeah, these are images.

These are images of the clouds. And we were kind of excited but we were nervous. We are not Venus people. So let's only to discover that, Japanese mission Akatsuki almost have exactly the same image. That was back even before we launched back from France.

It was kind of disappointing. And they showed this exactly the same data that that we saw at, at one of the seminars they gave. And Tony told the story as I said it. Now. But the folks who are Venus specialists here at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, they were so excited about that data set.

And they obviously we gave them the data, they looked into it. And guess what they actually learned about the composition of rocks on the surface of Venus. And on top of that, they discovered a new window to study the, the, the surface of the planet, like a sort of probe, now holds the shortest wavelength thermal emission from the surface of Venus. It's a record previous records. They there have been about one micron and 1.

58 micron. Parker Solar Probe with this new window holds the record of 0. 75 micron. And the future mission for Venus will actually exploit this since humans you ask. And then this is really goes into the science of the mission and from orbit one, when Parker Solar Probe flew close to the sun, we observed forwards in the magnetic fields that we call them switchbacks.

Basically, the magnetic field would roll all the way back to the sun and out again, forming a necessary. And when we saw them the first time and it was a Tuesday, and we were supposed to share that data for the first time with the public on the Thursday of the geomagnetic geo. American Geophysical Union. And for for the first time when we saw it, we thought, yeah, there is something wrong with this. And that was a really bad feeling.

You know, we have been waiting for this mission for 60 years. And if the first thing you get is really a problem with the instruments, that's pretty bad. So it took us probably something like 15 minutes to do some checks on the data and everything. Check it out. What we are seeing is something.

Can you and guess what these switchbacks that are that are that observed in abundance are close to the sun. They actually actually guiding us toward understanding what hits the corona and what's accelerate. Sort of. Well, it's kind of fascinating. It's really amazing.

So we have more questions coming up online. So let's get to more of those now. So if you are on X, how will the probe act when sudden, when a sudden coronal mass ejection or magnetic storm occurs during the flyby. That's a that's a really great question. Let me start by saying this one.

Parker Solar Probe is flying close to the sun. We cannot talk to the spacecraft, so it has to be 100% autonomous, meaning it has to deal with any issue that that it might encounter. And actually, the autonomy system that is built on the spacecraft can drive the vehicle for nearly two months without any intervention from the ground. And actually, we did that twice already. Now, Parker Solar Probe is designed to fly through, this big explosion that I've put in mass ejections.

And actually we flew through dozens of them and, the one that we showed earlier, actually, we see a tiny bit of momentum transfer to the spacecraft, but it it's so low. And Parker sort of obviously dealt with it without any issues at all. So that's why I said earlier the Sun, please do your best. Give us give us the strongest event you can do to deal with it. A lot of viewers are very intrigued that Parker Solar Probe can get close to the sun without melting, and I know we touched on it before, but can you tell us a little more about the technology that enables the spacecraft to get so close to our star?

Yeah, why don't you? You wanted to talk about this. I, I brought it up earlier, so why don't you go ahead? Sure. Obviously, Alex brought brought up the heat shield earlier, which is?

I have a sample of it here. So, and the heat shield is basically what enabled the whole mission. It's a piece of carbon foam that is four inch and a half thick. We have, a ceramic coating on top of it. It's white for a good reason, to reflect as much light as possible.

So when we when we designed the heat shield, we designed it for temperatures that the to withstand temperature of that any excess of 2500°F. So I was surprised. Actually the heat shield is cooler now and we are expecting only temperature of about 1800 degrees Fahrenheit when on December 24th, on the backside of the heat shield, that is for an inch and a half back, the temperature will. It would be about 500 degrees, and about a yard later it's almost room temperature. And the heat shield is basically what stands between the probe and the sun.

Everything has to fit within the shadow cone of the heat shield and to operate at room temperature, except a couple of sensors that are electrostatic antenna. And so, the solar wind instrument, obviously Parker Solar Probe has the right to wiggle a little bit like any, any spacecraft up there. But the tolerance for us, it's only for it's only a small fraction of a degree. And to maintain the altitude of the spacecraft we use for subsystems that together have to work together to keep the spacecraft. It was looking squarely at the sun.

If we use, momentum wheels, we use thrusters, we use a single cell, camera that we call them. Pull them the limp sensors. I, we come to them in a minute. And also we have, star trackers that are looking toward the at the back of the spacecraft, looking at the sky for the star field, basically to tell the spacecraft where it is located for the some of their sensors. This basically will detect the edge of the sun whenever Parker Solar Probe deviates a tiny bit.

And this will signal to send the signal to the computer to start basically correcting the attitude of the spacecraft. But all these four subsystems have to work together to, to maintain it, because if we don't do it, we can lose Parker Solar Probe in no time at all. The environment is so harsh it is not forgiving at all. And yeah, so far Parker Solar Probe is really duplicates off. So Matthew on Facebook asks how long will it take Parker Solar Probe to complete the 22nd perihelion or the 22nd orbit around the sun?

Well, we I don't know about to enter what we call the encounter, which is the part of the, of the orbit when Parker Solar Probe is below a quarter of a year, and it's just a few days from us from that. It takes about 11 days to cross the sun from one side to the other side. But when Parker Solar Probe is very close to the perihelion, the closest approach to the sun, it is zipping through longitudes. It can cover, over 150 degree longitudes in a couple of days, which is which is fascinating. It's that is fascinating.

So Victor Swenson on YouTube asks, how is the probe protected from gamma rays and what type of substrate is used on chips? Go ahead. One by four of a gamma rays. And and, the intensity of gamma rays is not really that high. And we don't have any specific shielding for it, but we have, enough shielding in the, in the spacecraft for radiation from the sun because we want to protect our, our, electronics and most of the electronics are actually within the bus, that hexagonal, structure that is in the back of the heated tool in the back of the spacecraft.

All the electronics are out there within that structure, and we have enough shielding. But also when we were designing the spacecraft, we had to make sure that we don't need to overload the spacecraft. That becomes too heavy. So it's really a balance between the two that the spacecraft is protected And I could also add that, gamma rays on the sun. That's something that I, studied, primarily come from solar flares.

They're not as common. And we've done a lot of studies about sort of the background sun and the gamma rays, for example, that are created in the core. Never make it out because those are eventually, turned into, the visible light, photons that we see here on Earth. So gamma rays are not particularly intense unless you're sitting right on top of a very large solar flare. You don't have much to worry about.

Okay? So a viewer on Twitch asks, other than shielding, what are some of the challenges of navigating in the vacuum of space at temperatures? Much warmer than a few degrees Kelvin? So one one thing about the medium the Parker Solar Probe is flying through, and it is multi-million degree hot that we know it. It's it's the corona in the solar wind.

But there is one aspect of it. It's very tenuous. The density is so low. So when Parker is flying through it, the gas itself does not really transfer that much heat to, to the spacecraft. So that's why Parker Solar Probe, we have only to protect it from the, the the radiation that is coming from the sun.

That's the main, the main, the main reason we want to protect it. Obviously. There is always risk that the spacecraft would encounter issues there, and, and we, we have seen it when, when, when probe is around the sun, for example, the star trackers, oftentimes the they turn off, but they turn them. The autonomy will turn them back on. So again, we rely on the autonomy system to guide the spacecraft when we can not talk to it.

It's we we have all sorts of, solution to almost all sorts of problems that the probe can, can, can, can go through. And so far everything was was still going fine. And. Yeah. And I'll, I'll add to that.

So Norris talking about how tenuous the corona is, this is a pretty, interesting thing that we love to talk about because it tells us about the difference between temperature and heat. If you actually were to take a, a cube about a meter cube and, and fill it with the corona, you would have maybe just a few particles inside that box. Moving around now, they're moving super fast, which is they're moving, to give them a temperature equivalent of many millions of degrees. But because there's only a few, there's not enough particles to really transfer any energy, which is the heat part. And as he mentioned, it's really the, the light radiation coming from the sun, which is so incredibly intense, that we're concerned about.

A lot that I think, you know, if there is one thing, just a small thing that, I really want to point out before I forget that. So, yeah, the focus is, on the sun, our star. But the phenomena that we are studying here, they are not unique to the sun. We see them in billions and billions of stars out there in the universe. And basically, by having this close look at that star, we will also learn about other stars in the universe and in particular.

Now we are so interested to know if we are alone in this universe. Basically, we are looking for, for life elsewhere. We want to understand how, Earth is really. So, is it really so special that we are unique or we are? And also whether the sun, can I mean, then the sun can enable life elsewhere in the solar system as well.

That's also another another aspect. Yeah. And this is one of the reasons why we study the sun. The sun is the only star that we can treat as a laboratory. It's the only star that we can see, in detail, but we can actually go to and measure it directly.

And that's one of the reasons that I started studying the sun is it's a laboratory in our solar system that allows us to learn about all the other stars in the universe, and how all those stars interact with the the billions and billions of other planets that may or may not be like our own, planets in our solar system. Exactly. So Johnny on X asks, how do you communicate with the probe at its closest approach to the sun? Yeah. When we are very close to the sun.

Actually, we cannot talk to the spacecraft at all. The spacecraft every now and then talk to us, and it's so limited. So, when we are going toward the sun and and the way in a certain point, Parker Solar Probe will send us what we call the beacon tow. And the beacon tone is really a very limited piece of telemetry that tells us the overall state of the spacecraft. And so far we got only green beacon tones, which is basically a synonym of the spacecraft is a it's nominal, state.

And also on the outside where we get another one. So for this encounter that is that we are about to enter on December 22nd, we will get the first beacon tone. And after the closest approach from December, the night of December 20th 6 or 27, around midnight, we will get the other beacon tone. That's to tell us how Parker Solar Probe did during this closest approach. Other than that, when it is during the encounter, we cannot talk to it at all.

We can not do anything to it at all. But when it moves far away, then we can. We have the, the high gain antenna. We can actually oriented toward Earth. We can talk to the spacecraft to get data up in, get data from the spacecraft, but also upload commands to the spacecraft.

Yeah, that's one of the things that makes, these kind of missions not just going around the sun so difficult. And because it's far away, as they get farther away, also the signals are weaker and it's made. It makes it a challenge. You know, flying space spacecraft is not easy. And engineers are amazing.

And we are we are really thankful for the, the DSN folks who are doing an amazing job. Whenever, I mean, they bring us a lot of data, I mean, communicating with the spacecraft, but also when, when there are emergencies, they really step up and provide provide us the support we need to to deal with them. Yeah. The DSM, by the way, it's Deep Space Network, which is something we use for, you know, really distant missions like Voyager for New Horizons. And then some of the other solar missions, like, stereo is Soho, for example.

Yeah, yeah. So, I have another question, on X from Christopher Casey, and Christopher asks, Will solar wind ever be used to drive space ships? Oh, oh, that's a good one. That's a really good way to start. I'll start with this one.

Yeah. So, well, there are something called solar sails. So one of the, the, one of the ideas is with solar sails actually using momentum, from light or from particles, but because there are spaces so big and there's so few, these solar sails to be practical have to be incredibly big. Maybe the size of, many, many square kilometers. But I will say I've, I've actually read some papers about technology to create a giant solar sail, to actually, use the solar wind to generate electricity.

Now, it's certainly not something that's practical and, it for us right now, but it was a really interesting concept. Yeah. To that point. And there are certain, companies out there that are looking for using harvesting, basically the gusts that we are flying through, and in particular, when you're flying away from the sun to in particular for, producing nuclear power or things like that. So, there are ideas like that.

The technology might not be mature for now, but that's really something for the future that we have to look at for. So Jaden on Twitch asks which of the four instrument suites will see the most intensive use this perihelion, or will they all be equally used? All of them? Oh, all of them. I mean, we have we have the imager that is whisper that is that that provides us with images like the ones we we saw before.

We have the field suite that basically measure magnetic fields, electric fields, densities, waves, fluctuations, radio emissions. We have the suite, suite with measure of the solar wind that are electrons, protons and, and helium ionized twice that we call alphas. And also we have the ESA's instrument suite that measure this energetic particles that we talked about earlier. Get that these are very high energy particles. So all of them would work together to provide us with basically a picture for the whole medium we are flying through.

Yeah. I mean, this is one of the important things about science missions. For most of them, you know, when we look at the universe, we have to look at different, different particles, different types of light. We can't just look at a single thing to get a bigger picture of what's really going on. And this is especially the case here for studying this, this very complex region.

We have to have a lot of different types of information, and all of those together are pieces of the puzzle. Otherwise, you know, we're really not we're really missing out on a whole lot of information. So let me add to the to this. We are so lucky to have launched Parker Solar Probe in 2018. About a year, a little over a year later, we launched Solar Orbiter, which is the ESA, NASA mission, and the year later we also got the largest solar telescope in Hawaii also started operating.

So these three all together, they form really probably together they form a golden era to to study for the physics of to study the sun. But let me add one thing. I think it was the third orbit of Parker Solar Probe. And when I put, an announcement out there basically soliciting observatories to, to, to volunteer their time to observe with us when Parker Solar Probe is flying by the sun. And my whole back then was, yeah, basically we'll have we get a handful of them to observe.

Well guess what? We got over 50 observatories between space and Earth that are that volunteered their time to observe with us. And since then, for every orbit we have this campaign that is ongoing. My expectation for the closest approach would break that record of 50 observatories. I'm hoping for more than that.

So we have an interesting question on Twitch. What do we hope to learn about other stars in the process of investigating our own sun? Again, I'll I'll start, one of the things that's that's important. Well, a lot of the aspects of what Parker is measuring are ubiquitous with other stars. However, stars vary.

They vary in size, they vary in age. And so some of the details are very different. Many stars have, a wind like the solar wind, we call them stellar winds. There are some that do not. There are some that have incredibly violent stellar winds.

But one of the things that I think is for me, me personally, I think is one of the most critical ideas is better understanding, magnetic reconnection. Magnetic reconnection is the way that we know of that nature is able to convert magnetic fields into energy. Magnetic fields contain energy, but converting that into energy, that nature can actually utilize is is is quite difficult and quite complicated. But it happens all through the universe. It happens around the Earth and its magnetosphere, which is, the reason why we launch the, the, Magnetosphere Multiscale Mission, or Ms..

It happens at the sun with things like the solar wind, with things like coronal mass ejections, with solar flares. But it also happens around black holes. It happens around, different star systems that eventually become types of supernova. So it's really important. It happens everywhere on different scales.

And that's one of the reasons that what we're learning from Parker Solar Probe is so critical for understanding fundamental physics across the entire universe. If I add something to that and Alex basically said he thought so. I think one of the top questions that in the minds of everybody out there, I mean, is basically whether we are special in the whole universe, whether we are unique, and if we are, we are we are not unique. How how life can develop around other stars. And we have our sun, which is just in our neighborhood here.

We want to understand how it shapes its its, star bubble that we call the heliosphere and how it really life on Earth, you know, how did that. But more than that, we recently we we launched in another lesson, another mission that is the Europa Clipper to study the, Europa moon that is one of the moons of, out there that has the potential to, to have, an ocean before the, the below the, the ice and might it actually might have life. And pretty soon we will launch another exciting mission, dragonfly. It will go to Titan, that is a moon of Saturn. And that is going really to look at chemistry, to look at different aspects that might be relevant to life there.

Basically, we started looking at signature of life as well. So it comes to, at the end, how the sun interacts with its planetary system and where it, it can potentially kick, kick life, kick like the we know we are here on earth. We know that's for sure. And it's the only place on the universe we know that is life and that is us. And and, but also we want to understand that spirit.

And again, what we learn from Parker Solar Probe and other mission is so critical to achieve the. So Rick Weber on X asks, what is the most perplexing question about our sun that NASA would like to answer through this probe? That's a tough that well, so many of them. It's not that there is no surface of them. You know what?

I would start with the interior and remove out. So if I came to you for a first of all, we have absolutely no idea how the core of the sun itself works. We know that our thermal nuclear reactions that are going there, and that's actually what produces all the energy that the sun uses to, to do everything in the solar system. But if you move, above, we also know that all the magnetic fields that we are talking about, they are actually generated in the interior of the sun. And the funny thing is that the auto generated in a cyclic fashion, we have what we call the solar cycle that is 11 years long.

We go from a period when the sun is pretty quite like 2018, when we lost Parker Solar Probe to a maximum, when the sun is very active like it is now. And when we move again to a period of minimum again. And this is not all the sun, every now and then, every about 200 years of 300 years, we go through an extended period of tranquility, like it's like the mother minimum that occurred in the 17, 1617 hundreds. And when it goes very far right there, it affects it's the our environment, for example, really big star like the the mini ice ice age that occurred in 1645, 17, 15. Actually the sun at that time was very, very quiet.

So this variability of the sun, it's all driven by that magnetic field that is generating the interior and rises up to the atmosphere and do all these phenomena that we we got to understand other. Yeah. And so this process that, Nour is referring to, we call it a solar dynamo. And it's a very important physical process. In fact, the, the, a magnetic field of the Earth is generated in a very similar way.

The Earth is, has a liquid, a metallic core. So any object that's liquid or some sort of, substance like the sun is made up of, called a plasma. These are have the properties of liquids and solids, but they are electromagnetic in nature. They respond to electricity, magnetism. And when they spin, they don't spin equally.

Just like the planet Jupiter or Saturn, which is makes those striations in it. And that causes that produces this magnetic field, this dynamo. And it's incredibly complicated. And right now we have computer models that can somewhat produce, what we see with the sun, but we can't quite figure out, for example, why is it 11 years? Why is it not, you know, 15 years?

We see these cycles on other stars and they have different links. So, this is one of the key pieces to the sort of fundamental nature of a star of our star in particular, that we do not fully understand. And we have a long way to go. Maybe once we understand it, we might be able to make real, robust predictions of the solar cycle. You know, the next solar cycle.

Will it be big? Will it be small? Will it be longer or shorter? That would be part of the goal of that. But this is just a huge outstanding problem.

That that will probably be one of the biggest discoveries, you know, if that is solved in our lifetime. And that connects to all of the things that are happening at the surface and in the corona, which are what we're learning about from Parker Solar Probe. So talking about the atmosphere of the sun and the corona, we have all this activity that we talk about like flares and promotes. And by the way, we oftentime we talk only about the big ones, but it's really a whole spectrum. They occur at all scales and even the smaller ones that are extremely important.

Now, well, they are the drivers of space weather and that we, we see here on our environment every now and then. And we need really to, to aim for, reliable predictions of what the sun is about to do at any time, space with the our prediction capabilities of space weather out of both may be 50 years behind the prediction of weather on Earth, but we are getting there. So at a certain point, we will be able to predict the space weather like we predict weather. But let me say this often times when we talk about the solar activity and what it does to our environment, we kind of give in giving it, give it a meaning negative meaning that it's really hard. It is really sad.

It is, you know, gloomy. And guess what? Without that activity, we would not exist. That activity is really necessary for life to kick, to kick off whenever it has to kick off from the star. So in a way, the sun can is really our reason to exist, but it can also affect us in in, in adverse ways.

So we have to find a way how to live with it in harmony. And the best way is to understand it and to understand it through missions like Parker Solar Probe. All right. So we have time for one final question, and this is for both of you. Can you quickly tell me what advice do you have for viewers who might be interested in helping NASA study the Sun?

Well, I would say one way to to really help Dasa would be to participate in citizen science. You know, citizen science, we can look at everything from extra, you know, extrasolar planets to, aurora, to solar flares. They're all sorts of different, aspects of Earth and space science that NASA studies. And there are huge number of citizen science projects. All of them provide data that is that is really important and in many ways critical for NASA and something that we could never get on our own.

And if you can, if you participate, you two will be a scientist and helping us to discover and understand the world we live in. So to everybody out there, and I'm mainly addressing the younger generations that are coming from babies all the way to the students. If you think that, the Parker Solar Probe is very complex or James Webb is very complex, guess what? Now we are getting we are looking for missions that are we way more complex than that. If you think of, for example, for the sun, the goal is no longer to launch a single spacecraft.

We're aiming to launch constellations. And when we are talking about constellation, I don't know how many birds we are talking about. And this is really all up to you to do it. So my my advice to everybody out there be, be curious, be bold, be adventurous. And guess what?

We don't only need engineers and scientists, we need all sorts of, of knowledge. We need scientists. We need engineers. We need, financial people. We need lawyers, lawyers, a lawyer, a doctor.

We need everything. Yeah. We need. Yeah. You cannot imagine.

To build a mission so complex. You need thousands of people to build it. It's not really only the couple of us who are speaking here who basically, came together and put it together. It's really take an army to build a mission, like personal property. Yeah.

Every single person is, is really critical. And it is. It takes a team, and that it will always be that way. So yeah, that is great advice. Thank you both so much for joining us to discuss this incredibly important and interesting topic.

Thanks for having us. And thank you to everyone watching online. To stay updated on Sun Science, follow NASA Sun Science on Facebook and NASA sun on X. We'll be sharing updates on those channels, as well as NASA's website about Parker Solar Probe closest approach to the sun, so stay tuned. Another way you can participate in NASA Sun Science is through our puzzle quest.

As we mentioned earlier, today is the start of a 3. 8 quest, and we're challenging you to solve our puzzles as fast as you can to find hidden web pages and custom 3. 8 digital stickers. Thank you so much and see you next time!

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