On 9 February, a new mission is started by the European Space Agency (ESA) to study the Sun was lifted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida, USA. The spacecraft is Called as Solar Orbiter. This European Space Agency (ESA) mission will travel within the orbit of the planet Mercury to study the Sun’s surface like never before. It will give us the stunning images of its surface.
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| Image Credit- ESA |
It
is equipped with new and well-developed instruments and high tech
cameras, the decade-long mission is set to provide the scientists
with the key information in their ongoing solar researches. Here are
the five unanswered questions about the Sun it might finally help us
to solve.
1. When Solar Eruptions Are Heading Our Way
SolarOrbiter will reach very close to the Sun. The minimum distance
between the spacecraft and the Sun will be 0.28% of the distance
between Earth-Sun, throughout its mission, which could last the rest
of the 2020s. No other mission will have come closer to the Sun,
either than NASA's Parker
Solar Probe mission, which will reach just 0.04 times the
Earth-sun distance.
Dr.
Emilia from the University of Helsinki in Finland is the coordinator
of a project called SolMag,
which is studying eruptions of plasma from the sun known as Coronal
Mass ejections (CMEs). ‘The equipment and a suite of cameras on the
Solar Orbiter spacecraft will gather the data that is significantly
better than any spacecraft before, it will help us in the monitoring
of CMEs’ she said. The Parker Solar Probe lacks in all these
things.
The
Solar Orbiter will cover a lot of different distances which helps us
in capturing these coronal mass ejections when they are evolving from
the Sun to Earth. These eruptions can cause space
weather events on Earth, so this will help us to get
early-warnings when they are heading in our way.
2. Why The Sun Blows A Supersonic Wind
Another
most important unanswered question about the sun is its outer
atmosphere. Its temperature is more than a million degrees, and we
don't know the reason behind its extremely high temperature.The
coordinator of a project studying solar wind called Slow Source,'
Dr. Alexis Rouillard said.
As
the result of this hot corona (sun’s atmosphere) is cannot be contained by its gravity
which means that it has a constant wind blowing the particles out
into outer space, known as the solar wind. The speed of the wind is
more than 250km per second and goes up to the speed of 800km per
second, and we currently do not know how that wind is pushed outwards
at a very high speed.
Dr.
Rouillard hopes that the study of the slower solar wind will possibly
be using Solar Orbiter, which may help us in explaining how the sun
creates supersonic winds. 'Due to this closeness to the sun we can
collect more (pristine) particles,' he said. 'Solar Orbiter will
provide us the measurements of the solar wind composition by which we
will be able to create the models for studying how the wind is
pushed out into space.'
3. What Its Poles Look Like
During
the whole mission, Solar Orbiter will make repeated encounters with
the planet Venus. Each time it encounters the Venus, the angle of the
spacecraft's orbit will
be slightly raised. Until the spacecraft raised above the planets,
this process will be repeated. After 10 years (in 2030) it will reach
an inclination of 33 degrees. Then it will able to provide the
first-ever photographs of the sun’s poles. If the mission will go
as hoped, it will succeed in doing this.
By
measuring the sun's magnetic fields at the poles, scientists hope to
the understanding of that how and why the sun flips its magnetic
poles after every 11-year cycles of activity. They will flip in the
mid of the 2020 (this year).
'This
will helps us in a better understanding of how the magnetic fields
are distributed and evolve in these polar
regions. After every 11 years, the sun goes from a minimum
activity state to a maximum activity state known as the solar cycle.
By the measurements of these latitudes, it will provide new insights
on the cyclic evolution.
4. Why It Has Polar 'crowns'
Sometimes
the sun erupts huge arm-like loops of material from its surface,
which are known as prominences. They extend from the surface of the
sun into the atmosphere of the sun known as the corona, but the
formation is not well defined. However, the Solar Orbiter will give
us the best information about it till now.
'We're
going to study of some of these active regions with the help of Solar
Orbiter,' says Professor Rony Keppens from KU Leuven in Belgium,
coordinator of a project called PROMINENT in
which they are studying some solar prominences. 'It will give us more
than several images per second. By which we can visualize some of the
dynamics for the first time that had not been seen before.
The
sun's largest prominences will come from its poles, so by raising the
inclination of Solar Orbiter, it will give us a unique look at these
phenomena. 'They're called as polar crown prominences because they
are like crowns on the head of the sun. They create a boundary around
the polar regions and they live there for very long on end. The Solar
Orbiter is going to give the first views of the polar regions that
are going to be very exciting.
5. How It Controls The Solar System
With
the help of Solar Orbiter scientists hope to study and better
understanding that how the sun’s eruptions travel out into the
solar system, which creates a bubble around the sun in our galaxy
known as the heliosphere. This can create the earth’s weather like
space, So the study of it is very important for our own planet Earth.
'One
of the things that we can do is that we have to take measurements of
the solar magnetic
field in active regions of the sun,' said Professor Keppens.
'We're going to study that data into the sun’s atmosphere (corona)
and then we use simulations in understanding how some of these
eruptions happen and progress out into the heliosphere.'
Thus,
the Solar Orbiter will not just give us a better understanding of the
sun itself, but also how it affects our planet (Earth) too. Although
it will provide us the first-ever images of the sun’s poles and its
surface, Solar Orbiter will give us an understanding of how the star
we call home works.
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