We have created amazing fuss and plenty of intrigue about Mars and even as the Red Planet is still being explored, NASA has decided that it will try and get close to the sun and do that in seething hot conditions which would surely put to test anything and everything man has designed so far. The temptation seems to be too much for NASA to resist as the claim that they will try and explore outer parts of the Sun by 2015 or sometime beyond that!

Currently, the exploration probe for this venture is still in its early design phase, called “pre-phase A.” Although it is a very initial phase, Guhathakurta describes a very excited team, explaining that “This is an unexplored region of the solar system and the possibilities for discovery are off the charts. Johns Hopkins’ Applied Physics Lab will design and build the spacecraft for NASA. Besides the early model, APL had other experiences with probes sent toward the sun. Messenger spacecraft completed its first flyby of the planet Mercury in January 2008 and many of the same heat-resistant technologies will fortify the new Solar Probe Plus.

The closest the Solar Probe Plus will get is 9 solar radii (7 million km) from the sun, where it appears 23 times wider than it does in the skies of earth. There, the spacecraft’s carbon-composite heat shield must withstand temperatures greater than 1,400 Celsius degrees and survive blasts of radiation at levels not experienced by any previous spacecraft. Naturally, the probe is solar powered. The electricity is retrieved via liquid-cooled solar panels; when the sunlight becomes too intense they will be retracted behind the heat-shield.

There are two major issues this mission is concerned with. The first is the high temperature of the sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona: it registers more than a million degrees Celsius, hundreds of times hotter than the star below. The second mystery is the puzzling acceleration of the solar wind. To solve these mysteries, Solar Probe+ will actually enter the corona and explore to unravel these mysteries. It all sounds very exciting and if anyone can do it then it would be NASA for sure!

Via: thefutureofthings295266