parker: Flying through ‘corona’: NASA’s Sun-shine moment arrives

In a new and major milestone, a Nasa probe (the Parker Solar Probe) has successfully flown through the Sun’s upper atmosphere or corona, the American space agency announced. As per the space agency, the solar probe passed within 15 solar radii (about 6.5 million miles) from the surface of the Sun and sampled the particles and the magnetic fields in play there. This is the first time a spacecraft has “touched the Sun”, as per Nasa.
The Parker Solar Probe launched on its mission in 2018, taking three years to fly in the Sun’s corona. The probe collected samples of particles, the solar wind, the flow of particles from the Sun that could influence the Earth. As per Nasa, in 2019, the solar probe discovered that magnetic zig-zag structures in the solar wind, called switchbacks, are plentiful close to the Sun and since it has flown so close to the surface of the Sun, the probe has now been able to identify the place of their origin, which is the solar surface.

Nasa hailed the feat in an official post. “Parker Solar Probe “touching the Sun” is a monumental moment for solar science and a truly remarkable feat,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington “Not only does this milestone provide us with deeper insights into our Sun’s evolution and it’s impacts on our solar system, but everything we learn about our own star also teaches us more about stars in the rest of the universe.”
As per Nasa, the Sun does not have a solid surface like the Earth, and has instead an atmosphere constituted of solar material bound to the star due to the pull of gravity and magnetic forces. The cause of the solar wind is the pressure and the heat pushing that material away from the Sun, to a point where the hold of gravity and other forces weakens. This point, named the Alfvén critical surface, marks the end of the solar atmosphere and the beginning of the solar wind, said Nasa in the post.
Parker will keep collecting more data over the coming years. With this success, we might see more such missions in the future which would hopefully help unlock further secrets of the lone star in our solar system.