The Sun looks peaceful from Earth.
Every morning, it rises in the sky, providing light and warmth to our planet. But up close, the Sun is an incredibly active and extreme environment.
Its surface is constantly changing.
Huge eruptions can release enormous amounts of energy.
Powerful streams of charged particles travel through space.
And the Sun's magnetic field can twist and snap, creating dramatic events known as solar flares and coronal mass ejections.
Understanding the Sun is important not only for astronomy.
It is also important for life and technology on Earth.
That is why NASA sent the Parker Solar Probe on a mission to travel closer to the Sun than any spacecraft before it.
The spacecraft was launched in 2018 and began a remarkable journey through the inner solar system.
Parker Solar Probe uses a specially designed heat shield to protect its instruments from the extreme environment near the Sun.
The spacecraft's mission is to study the Sun's outer atmosphere, known as the corona.
The corona is surprisingly hot.
In fact, the temperature of the corona is much higher than the temperature of the Sun's visible surface.
This creates one of the biggest mysteries in solar physics.
Scientists want to understand how the Sun's atmosphere becomes so hot and how energy moves from the Sun's interior into the corona.
The Parker Solar Probe is helping researchers investigate this mystery by flying directly through the solar environment.
The spacecraft also studies the solar wind.
The solar wind is a continuous flow of charged particles that travels outward from the Sun through the solar system.
These particles can interact with planets and their magnetic fields.
Earth has a magnetic field that protects us from much of the solar wind.
But powerful solar activity can still have effects on our planet.
Solar storms can disturb Earth's magnetic environment and potentially affect satellites, radio communication, navigation systems and electrical infrastructure.
This makes understanding solar activity important for modern technology.
As humans become increasingly dependent on satellites and electronic systems, scientists need to better understand the space environment surrounding Earth.
This field is known as space weather.
Just as meteorologists study Earth's weather, space weather researchers study changes in the Sun and how they affect the space around our planet.
Parker Solar Probe is providing valuable information for this research.
One of the most exciting parts of the mission is that the spacecraft is collecting data from a region of space that humans have never explored so closely before.
It is essentially entering the Sun's neighbourhood and measuring the environment directly.
The spacecraft's instruments can study magnetic fields, particles and waves.
Together, these observations help scientists build a better picture of how the Sun works.
The mission is also helping researchers understand the physics of stars more generally.
The Sun is a star, and studying it in detail gives scientists information that can help them understand other stars throughout the universe.
Of course, the Sun is still incredibly far away from Earth.
But compared with the distances between stars, it is our closest laboratory for studying stellar physics.
This makes the Sun a unique scientific opportunity.
Parker Solar Probe's journey is also an engineering achievement.
The spacecraft must survive extreme heat while travelling at enormous speeds.
Its heat shield is designed to protect the instruments while the spacecraft flies through the intense solar environment.
The mission demonstrates how advances in engineering can make previously impossible scientific missions possible.
The data collected by Parker Solar Probe will continue to be studied for years.
Scientists may discover new information about solar wind, magnetic fields and the processes that heat the Sun's atmosphere.
Some discoveries could even improve our ability to predict space weather.
That could become increasingly important as technology continues to expand into space.
Satellites provide communications, navigation and weather information.
Spacecraft explore other worlds.
Astronauts live and work in orbit.
All of these systems operate in an environment influenced by the Sun.
Understanding our star is therefore becoming more important than ever.
The Sun may be 150 million kilometres away, but its influence reaches every corner of our planet.
By travelling closer to it than any spacecraft before, Parker Solar Probe is helping scientists uncover the secrets of the star that makes life on Earth possible.
The mission is a reminder that sometimes the best way to understand the universe is to study the star that has been shining above us all along.
WHAT WE LEARNED
NASA's Parker Solar Probe is designed to study the Sun up close.
It has travelled closer to the Sun than any previous spacecraft.
The mission investigates the Sun's corona and solar wind.
Scientists are studying why the corona is much hotter than the Sun's visible surface.
Solar activity can influence Earth's space environment and technology.
Parker Solar Probe's data can help scientists better understand space weather.
Studying the Sun also helps scientists understand other stars.
SOURCES
- NASA Parker Solar Probe Mission
- Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory: Parker Solar Probe
- NASA Space Weather
Fact checked with Chanakya AI