We are literally living the future in 2017, from new found habitable planets to launching record number of satellites in our orbit; one can say that the future is right now. And fuelling the space exploration programs is the new initiative by NASA to send robot to the sun.
NASA is in works to send the first robotic spacecraft to the Sun next year. The spacecraft will travel six million kilometers to study the atmosphere of sun. This mission will understand that why the surface of the sun has a low temperature than its atmosphere.
According to NASA, the surface temperature of the Sun is only about 5,500 degrees Celsius. But, the atmosphere above the surface of sun is a blistering 2 million degrees Celsius. NASA has designed an 11.4cms carbon-composite shield, which is designed to withstand temperatures outside the spacecraft of 1,370 degrees Celsius.
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Eric Christian, a NASA research scientist at Goddard Space Flight Centre said, “This is going to be our first mission to fly to the Sun. We can’t get to the very surface of the Sun.” He further explained, “You would think the farther away you get from a heat source, you would get colder, if that is case then why the atmosphere is hotter than the surface is a big puzzle.”
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“The Sun blows a stream of charged particles in all directions at a million miles an hour. But we do not understand how that gets accelerated,” he said.
Image Credit: imperial.ac.uk
