A NASA spacecraft has made history by surviving its closest-ever approach to the Sun during the Parker Solar Probe mission, a project over six years in the making.
The spacecraft was out of communication for several days, but it flew by when scientists finally received a signal from the Parker Solar Probe right before midnight EST on Thursday. The probe has been declared “safe” by NASA, which further stated that it is now working just fine, having been just 3.8 million miles or 6.1 million km from the surface of the sun.
“Parker Solar Probe has phoned home!”
– NASA Sun & Space posted on X (previously Twitter)
Established in 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the US federal government, which is responsible for the civil space program of the US as well as aeronautics and space research.
Back in 2000, NASA’s Living With a Star program, which revolves around exploring aspects of the Sun-Earth system that affects life, was proposed, and then Parker Solar Probe was developed as a part of it.
The mission is managed by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), which designed, built, and operated the spacecraft.
“Parker Solar Probe is braving one of the most extreme environments in space and exceeding all expectations. This mission is ushering in a new golden era of space exploration, bringing us closer than ever to unlocking the Sun’s deepest and most enduring mysteries.”
– Nour Rawafi, project scientist for Parker Solar Probe at the APL
While the beacon tone received from Parker Solar Probe confirms the safety of the spacecraft, there’s much to be achieved. The next solar pass will now be on March 22, 2025, and after that, June 19, 2025, is planned for the same.
The Parker Solar Probe has swept past the Sun 21 times already, getting nearer to the star every time. But it was on Christmas Eve that it reached a record-breaking level closer as the probe plunged into the sun’s outer atmosphere.
“We are 93 million miles away from the Sun, so if I put the Sun and the Earth one meter apart, Parker Solar Probe is 4 cm from the Sun – so that’s close.”
– Dr. Nicola Fox, head of science at NASA
Being so close, the spacecraft has to experience brutal temperatures and extreme radiation. According to the NASA website, the spacecraft was moving at the speed of 430,000 mph, which is faster than any object made by humans has ever moved. This speed came from the gravitational pull the spacecraft felt as it fell towards the Sun.
The spacecraft also had to endure temperatures as high as 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit or 980 degrees Celsius. Such high temperatures could have frayed the onboard electronics, but the spacecraft had an 11.5 cm thick shield made of carbon composite to protect it.
The shield is actually designed to reach temperatures of 2,600F or around 1,430C, which is capable of melting steel. While the outside can handle pretty high temperatures, the instruments behind it are kept shaded at a comfortable room temperature.
The latest accomplishment, APL Director Ralph Semmel stated, has been made possible by the “incredible technological breakthroughs.”
The Mission’s Journey
The aim of the Parker Solar Probe mission is to better understand how our star, aka the sun, actually works and its connection with Earth.
The Sun is at the center of the Solar System, around which Earth, along with other components of the solar system, revolve. It is a massive and very stable source of energy that provides our planet with the light and heat necessary to support life on Earth.
This sphere of hot plasma is heated to its extreme brightness by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. It then radiates the energy from its surface primarily as visible light and infrared radiation.
Being a part of the “observable universe,” the Sun can be observed by humans with the help of technology. It is also the only star that humans can visit to study up close.
Given that the sun is an integral part of our lives, providing light and warmth for plants to grow, evaporating water that falls back as rain and snow, driving weather and climate, and keeping everything in orbit through its gravity, it has been the subject of several space missions.
But while people have been studying the Sun for centuries, in order to actually experience the atmosphere, we need to visit the place, and as Fox previously told a media publication:
“We can’t really experience the atmosphere of our star unless we fly through it.”
That, however, is not so simple because going to the Sun and exploring it is far more difficult and complex compared to other space missions. This is because Earth is traveling at a really high speed around the sun and, as such, requires advanced technology and a huge amount of fuel to “fall” towards the Sun and then withstand its extreme heat.
But as we saw, the Parker Solar Probe has been successful in its mission, reaching the closest ever to the star.
It all started late in 2017 when launch preparations for the mission first got off the ground. A year later, it was officially launched and successfully completed a major mission milestone, i.e., the first trajectory correction maneuver, which put the spacecraft on course to ‘touch’ the Sun.
In Jan. 2020, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe completed its fourth close approach to the Sun and broke speed and distance records.
Two years later, the Parker Solar Probe had a “monumental moment” of “touching the Sun,” which Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA, called “a truly remarkable feat.”
Then, a year after that, the spacecraft flew through one of the most powerful coronal mass ejections in recorded history.
Late last year, it zoomed past Venus, whose gravity assists are essential to guiding the Parker Solar Probe progressively closer to the Sun. The spacecraft relies on the planet to reduce its orbital energy, allowing it to travel closer to the Sun.
Now, on December 27, the spacecraft has achieved its record-breaking closest approach to the Sun and transmitted a beacon tone back to Earth, indicating it’s in good health and operating normally.
Over seven years, the spacecraft will complete as many as 24 orbits around the Sun with the goal to “revolutionize our understanding of the Sun” by having the spacecraft gradually orbiting closer to the Sun’s surface, well within the orbit of Mercury.
The closer the spacecraft goes to the Sun, the more brutal heat and radiation it faces, and that will help it provide humanity with “unprecedented observations.”
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The Mission’s Goal
The spacecraft will fly more than seven times closer to the Sun than any spacecraft. It has already flown into the corona, the outermost part of the Sun’s atmosphere, for the very first time in 2021.
The corona, which is the outer atmosphere of the Sun, “is really, really hot.” Compared to the Sun’s surface, which is about 6,000C or so, its tenuous outer atmosphere, which is the corona, reaches millions of degrees. But scientists do not yet know the reason behind it all.
A close-up study of the Sun by Parker Solar Probe will allow the spacecraft to take measurements, which, according to NASA, will help scientists better understand just how material up there gets heated to millions of degrees and find out how energetic particles accelerate to light speed.
Another important thing the measurements and images collected by Parker Solar Probe will help with is tracing the origin and evolution of the solar wind, which is a continuous flow of material escaping the Sun. It is the solar wind that creates auroras and strips the atmospheres of planets.
While most of the solar wind is deflected by Earth, some particles still sneak through, which contributes to the glowing lights of the auroras. A particularly thick and swift explosion of solar wind can even temporarily compress the magnetic field of Earth and affect our power grids.
The journey of this solar wind comes to an end at the heliopause, which is the border of our solar system and the outer boundary of the heliosphere, which scientists are working on understanding. NASA’s upcoming Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) will help with this and enable us to better understand how the solar wind engages with the deep, empty space to create a heliosphere.
“The data is so important for the science community because it gives us another vantage point. By getting first-hand accounts of what’s happening in the solar atmosphere, Parker Solar Probe has revolutionized our understanding of the Sun.”
– Kelly Korreck, a heliophysicist and program scientist at NASA Headquarters
The mission will further make critical contributions to predicting changes in the space environment that affect life and technology on our planet.
Already, several mysteries have been solved by the mission, including the discovery that switchbacks, magnetic zig-zag structures in the solar wind, are located close to the Sun and originate from its surface.
Scientists have also gathered insight into solar wind’s acceleration away from the sun, and future data will help us understand how. Observations have also shown that these solar explosions sweep everything that’s in their way and leave a vacuum behind.
All the data received from the spacecraft, Joe Westlake, the director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters, noted, “will be fresh information about a place that we, as humanity, have never been,” which makes it “an amazing accomplishment.”
Advancing the Mission
Now, we’ll take a look at the companies that are helping advance the Parker Solar Probe mission.
This includes United Launch Alliance (ULA), which is a joint venture between Lockheed Martin (LMT -0.21%) and Boeing (BA +0.19%), created almost a decade ago with an aim to transform the future of space launch through its accessible and affordable rocket. For the mission, ULA launched a Solar Orbiter on a Delta IV Heavy rocket.
The $3.69 billion energy storage solution provider EnerSys (ENS -1.1%) meanwhile was responsible for supplying a lithium-ion battery for the mission.
Then there’s Collins Aerospace, a unit of $155.34 bln aerospace and defense company Raytheon Technologies (RTX -0.28%), whose shares are up 38.7% year-to-date (YTD). For the Parker Solar Probe, the company designed and developed the innovative Solar Array Cooling System. It is a lightweight active thermal control system that requires low power to cool down the arrays and ensure that the electric power-generating solar arrays operate in the safe temperature range.
There is yet another publicly-listed company that was crucial to the mission and whose shares have been having a blast this year, recording a substantial increase in price.
Redwire Corporation (RDW +0.18%)
The global space infrastructure company provides civil, commercial, and national security programs. For the Parker Solar Probe, Redwire provided specialized sensors for the spacecraft navigation and proper orientation. The sensor includes seven Solar Limb Sensor Heads (SLSH), two Digital Sun Sensor Heads (DSSH), and one redundant DSS Electronics unit.
Redwire is also involved in the delivery of satellites for the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Proba-3 mission, which focuses on demonstrating the flying of highly precise satellite formations. The company is also providing a critical onboard computer system for ESA’s Hera mission, the European-led companion mission to NASA’s DART.
Redwire Corporation (RDW +0.18%)
With a market cap of $1.139 billion, RDW shares are currently trading at $17.24, up a whopping 500.7% this year. Interestingly, with these gains, RDW’s share price is back to its 2021 level, when it went to nearly $17 in Oct three years ago. But that followed a brutal downtrend for Redwire stocks as they declined to as low as $1.70 in Dec. 2022. This marked the bottom for prices, and since then, RDW prices have been on an uptrend, surpassing $17.80 on December 27.
With that, Redwire has an EPS (TTM) of -1.21 and a P/E (TTM) of -14.17. As for its financials, the company reported a revenue of $68.6 million for Q3 2024, an increase of 9.6% year-over-year (YoY). Net loss for the third quarter jumped to $21 million, including a loss contingency of $8 million related to the securities lawsuit.
During the quarter, Redwire completed the acquisition of spacecraft development company Hera Systems, which expanded the company’s ability to support specialized national security missions.
Besides the acquisition, which CEO and Chairman Peter Cannito called “a core strength” of Redwire, the company reported a “significant increase (30.2% YoY) in bids submitted and backlog” to $330.1 million, which he noted “indicates that our growth strategy is showing increasing potential.”
Earlier this month, the company was awarded a five-year contract worth $45.47 million by the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Space Vehicles Directorate to design, develop, and test prototype software and hardware for mission-critical technologies. This will include large deployable structures, payload accommodations, thermal management capabilities, and improved analysis for in-space and terrestrial national security applications.
A month before that, Redwire announced the successful return of its third shipment of pharmaceutical drugs that are not grown on Earth but rather in space. These crystals are being studied by the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, which is known for producing insulin using recombinant DNA for the purpose of treating chronic diseases. Redwire and Lilly’s joint research investigation last year showed that insulin crystals grown in microgravity are larger and more ordered than the Earth-grown ones.
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Conclusion
The Parker Solar Probe marks a monumental moment in our quest to explore the vast universe, which largely remains unexplainable, and the sun, which is a critical part of human life. By reaching closer and closer to the Sun, the mission has already helped unravel many mysteries that we didn’t have answers to, and the latest data after the closest-ever ‘touch’ will provide us with an even deeper understanding of the Sun, which gives Earth life.
To put it simply, this groundbreaking mission is expanding our scientific knowledge, showcasing human ingenuity and collaboration, and advancing space exploration technology, paving the way for future innovations. The continued success of the Parker Solar Probe and the resulting discoveries will further help shape our understanding of the cosmos, improve tech, and inspire future generations to take up difficult ventures and make them into reality!
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