NASA’s miracle spacecraft to touch the sun is in trouble. The Parker Probe is designed to make a series of flybys close to the Sun to measure various properties of the solar wind, including its speed, temperature and magnetic field. Basically, it is important for scientists to study almost everything about the Sun. Sadly, in an unfortunate turn of events, an instrument on NASA’s Parker Solar Probe crashed. It suddenly went offline on February 12, the space agency said in a blog post. Considering that it is so far from Earth and its resolution is only possible from a distance, does it jeopardize NASA’s mission to the Sun?
There is good news and bad news! Good at first. The mission team expects the Parker Solar Probe to come back online soon. “This occurred during the application of an approved flight software patch to the Energetic Particle Instrument (EPI-Hi). An anomaly review board determined that the instrument was timed out before the new patch was fully loaded. Already power cycled. NASA said in a brief update on Parker Solar Probe on February 17. EPI-Hi is one of two particle detectors designed to measure high-energy solar particles.
The bad news is that the instrument will be down for several weeks because the geometry between the probe and the Sun, and solar radio frequency interference, will also prevent a good uplink. Normal operations for EPI-Hi are expected to resume after the blackout period, before the spacecraft makes its 15th approach. the sun On March 12. Thankfully, overall the spacecraft is healthy and performing as expected.
About the Parker Solar Probe
The Parker Solar Probe was launched in 2018 to investigate the mysteries of the Sun. The Parker Solar Probe used Venus’s gravity to gradually bring its orbit closer to the Sun to unravel the mysteries of the Sun’s atmosphere during seven flybys over nearly seven years. The spacecraft travels at speeds in excess of 500,000 km/h, allowing for quick entry and exit to prevent heat loss from the Sun.
Much of the data collected by the Parker Solar Probe is obtained during a daring, extremely close flyby of the Sun, where the spacecraft experiences high temperatures and speeds very high. These flights take place approximately once every five months. The next flyby, which will mark the 15th in the mission’s history, will reach its peak on March 17, Space.com reported.
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