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Space: Nasa to reveal details of hotly anticipated mission to the sun

Introversion

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Built to withstand temperatures of more than 1400C, the Solar Probe Plus spacecraft is set to make an unprecedented attempt to get close to sun’s surface

Cue jokes about "they'd better wait until it's night"...

The Guardian said:
Nasa is set to make an announcement today about its hotly anticipated mission to send a spacecraft, the Solar Probe Plus, into the sun’s outer atmosphere.

The size of a car, shaped like the business end of a torch, and built to withstand temperatures of more than 1400C (2552F), the probe is set to be launched next summer in an unprecedented attempted to get up close to our star, coming within 4m miles of its surface.

“It is just extraordinary - it is something that people have wanted to do from the beginning of the space age,” said Tim Horbury, professor of physics at Imperial College London.

Scientist say the mission, costing in the region of $1.5bn, could radically change our understanding of the sun, while offering vital insights into space weather - phenomena including coronal mass ejections that trigger geomagnetic storms that not only damage satellite systems but can knock out power grids on Earth.

“It is just a hugely important and scientifically fascinating mission,” said David McComas, vice president of the Princeton University plasma physics laboratory and principal investigator for the probe’s “Integrated Science Investigation of the sun”, research that will probe how electrons, protons and other charged particles are accelerated in the sun’s atmosphere.

“It is far closer than anything ever built by humanity has ever gotten to the sun,” McComas said.

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OK, it may be I am doing data entry into my hand calculator (RPN, of course!) faster than I can think, but I believe 4 million miles works out to 0.3725 % of an Astronomical Unit (roughly eight light-minutes). That's a Hell of a lot closer than the Solar Probe Mission from a few decades ago was going to get: 1/40 AU. This will be interesting to watch, if it doesn't get canceled.

Solar Probe did-a friend spent years working on it. In later years he still kept a couple of hanger queen Herschel wedges for the main telescope in his office drawer. They were made of sapphire.
 
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The linked story, from The Guardian, features a really astute quotation from Tim Horbury, Professor of Physics at Imperial College of London:

“The thing about space is everyone has done the easy stuff – we are only left with the difficult things, so by definition this is risky,” he said. “They are really pushing the limits of what is possible. But that is the way you make progress.”

That principle can be applied appropriately to many things.

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dickson said:
OK, it may be I am doing data entry into my hand calculator (RPN, of course!) faster than I can think, but I believe 4 million miles works out to 0.3725 % of an Astronomical Unit (roughly eight light-minutes).
Click to expand...

I thought an AU was 93m miles? That would seem to put this probe's closest approach at about 4% an AU?

Solar Probe did-a friend spent years working on it. In later years he still kept a couple of hanger queen Herschel wedges for the main telescope in his office drawer. They were made of sapphire.
Click to expand...

Neat. Do you whether any of the engineers from Solar Probe have been involved with this new project?
 
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Introversion said:
I thought an AU was 93m miles? That would seem to put this probe's closest approach at about 4% an AU?
Click to expand...

You are correct. I slipped a decimal point. Eight light-minutes is just shy of 93 Megamiles-I just find it an easier way to remember how to estimate the value of an AU in metric units. As a physicist, the value of the speed of light is burned into my soul.

Neat. Do you whether any of the engineers from Solar Probe have been involved with this new project?
Click to expand...

I do not. It would, however, not surprise me to learn that the older and wiser heads among them were involved in the earlier project.

Some years back I attended a technical interchange meeting at an instrument contractor, as part of work on a weather satellite program. The room was full to the brim, 200 people easy. The age and sex distribution was highly bimodal: Most of the engineers, and nearly all of the women and people of color among them, were young. A sprinkling of white males with white hair made up the rest. (I later learned that almost the entirety of the previous engineering team had been canned a few years earlier.) I noticed that every time an issue or problem came up, the solution, or a path to a solution if there were no solution known, came from one of the white-haired Wise Heads, on the basis of their experience with a previous instrument that relied on similar technology.

You can't fault fresh-outs for being fresh-outs; all of us pass through that larval stage. There is, however, no replacement for the old ones in the audience who just might have already stubbed their toe on some of the problems that inevitably arise in a flight project.

For the sake of Solar Probe Plus, I hope they have the veterans on board!
 
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