NASA has revealed a stunning photograph of Venus, taken by its Parker spacecraft, from 7,693 miles away.
The image, taken on July 11 last year, is an almost strange black and white photograph of the night part of the planet – the side facing the Sun.
A bright rim around the edge of the planet is night light – the light emitted by oxygen atoms in the atmosphere, which recombines into molecules.
NASA’s $ 1.5 billion Parker Solar spacecraft – which focuses on studying the Sun and is humanity’s first visit to a star – was launched in August 2018.
However, Venus plays a massive role in Parker’s seven-year mission, as it capitalizes on the planet’s gravitational pull during several flights.
This new image captured in July was taken during the third of seven Venus flights scheduled during the Parker mission.
NASA’s Parker solar probe had a close-up view of Venus when it flew to the planet in July 2020. Some of the features seen by scientists are labeled in this annotated image. The dark spot that appears on the lower part of Venus is an artifact of the WISPR instrument
Parker successfully completed the fourth flight of Venus just last Saturday (February 20).
This new image from July was taken by the spacecraft’s WISPR tool – Large Field Image for the Parker Solar Probe.
WISPR is designed to take images of the solar corona and inner heliosphere in visible light, as well as images of the solar wind and its structures as the spacecraft approaches and flies.
The prominent dark feature in the center of the image is Aphrodite Terra, the largest mountain region on the planet’s surface.
The feature appears dark due to its lower temperature, about 85 ° F (30 ° C) colder than the environment.
This aspect of the image took the team by surprise, according to Angelos Vourlidas, a WISPR project scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland.
“WISPR is adapted and tested for visible light – we expected to see clouds, but the camera looked right at the surface,” Vourlidas said.
Although Parker Solar Probe focuses on the Sun, Venus plays a critical role in the mission. The spacecraft whips Venus a total of seven times during its seven-year mission. In the picture, the artist’s impression of Parker and the Sun.
This surprising observation sent the WISPR team back to the laboratory to measure the sensitivity of the instrument to infrared light.
If WISPR can really capture near-infrared wavelengths, it would provide new opportunities to study dust around the Sun and the inner solar system.
If it cannot take on additional infrared wavelengths, then these images – which show signatures of features on the surface of Venus – could have revealed a “window” previously unknown through the Venusian atmosphere.
“In any case, some interesting scientific opportunities await us,” Vourlidas said.
Parker’s main scientific goals are to track the flow of energy and understand the warming of the corona – the outermost layer of the Sun – and to explore what accelerates the solar wind.
Although Parker focuses on the Sun, Venus plays a critical role in its seven-year mission, which will run until 2025.
The ship will hit Venus seven times in total, using the planet’s gravity to bend the ship’s orbit and reduce its orbital energy.
These Venus gravitational aids allow Parker to fly closer and closer to the Sun in its mission to study the dynamics of the solar wind near its source.
In the seven years that have passed, Parker makes up to 24 close approaches to the Sun (known as perihelion), each of which is closer than the previous one (meanwhile, the seven approaches of Venus vary and do not necessarily approach time). .
At the closest approach, Parker will orbit the Sun at about 430,000 miles per hour – fast enough to get from Philadelphia to Washington, DC, in a single second.
Parker launched on August 12, 2018 and uses the gravity of Venus to bend its orbit. These gravitational aids allow Parker to fly closer and closer to the Sun. Each new approach is called perihelion. Its first flight by Venus was on October 3, 2018 and the first perihelion came on November 6, 2018 (03:27 UTC), at approximately 35.7 R from the Sun. RS means the sun’s rays. 1 Rs is the distance from the center of the Sun to its surface (approximately 436,000 miles or 696,000 kilometers)
It will travel up to 3.83 million miles from the Sun’s surface, facing heat and radiation “like no spaceship before,” says NASA.
This is inside the orbit of Mercury and about seven times closer than any spacecraft has come before.
Parker uses a thermal shield known as a thermal protection system, which is 8 feet in diameter and 4.5 inches thick.
At the closest approach to the Sun, while the front of the Parker Solar Probe is facing temperatures approaching 1,400 ° C (2,600 ° F), the spacecraft’s payload will be close to room temperature, at about 85 ° F.
The WISPR team captured several observations of Venus’ night part during Parker’s last Venus flight, just five days ago.
On Saturday, at just 20:05 GMT, Parker passed 2,385 km above the surface as it curved around the planet, moving about 25 km per second.
Scientists from the mission team expect to receive and process this data for analysis by the end of April.
“We look forward to these new images,” said planetary scientist Javier Peralta, who works on Akatsuki, a Japanese space probe studying the atmosphere of Venus.
“If WISPR can sense the thermal emission from the surface of Venus and the nocturnal glow – most likely from oxygen – on the planet, it can make valuable contributions to the study of the Venusian surface.”
The fourth gravitational assistance Venus this weekend prepares Parker for the eighth and ninth perihelion, scheduled for April 29 and August 9.
During each of these passes, Parker will break his own record when he reaches about 6.5 million miles from the solar surface, about 1.9 million miles closer than the previous perihelion of 8.4 million miles on January 17th.
Parker was launched on August 12, 2018 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and just 78 days later became the closest artificial object to the Sun, breaking the record set in April 1976 by the spacecraft Helios 2 (a joint venture of West Germany and NASA).
The mission is named for Eugene Parker, an American solar astrophysicist at the University of Chicago – the first NASA mission named after a living individual.
In the 1950s, Parker proposed a series of concepts about how stars – including our Sun – emit energy.
He called this energy cascade the solar wind and described a whole complex system of plasmas, magnetic fields and energy particles that make up this phenomenon.
HOW WILL YOU BUY THE PARKER SOLAR PROBE SO CLOSE TO THE SUN?
The Parker Solar Probe mission will require 55 times more energy than it would need to reach Mars, according to NASA.
It was launched on top of a United Delta IV Heavy Launch Alliance, one of the most powerful missiles in the world, with a third stage attached.
But its trajectory and speed are critical to reaching the correct orbit.
As the Earth and everything on it travels at about 67,000 miles per hour in a lateral direction toward the sun, the boats must be launched back to cancel the lateral movement, NASA explains.
The Parker spacecraft is passing the sun, so it will have to travel about 53,000 miles per hour, according to the space agency.
The Parker solar probe will rotate around Venus seven times in total, each passage slowing it down and pushing it closer and closer to the sun. These orbits are shown in the animation above
This will require a boost from the powerful Delta IV rocket and more gravitational assistance from Venus to slow it down.
The probe will rely on a series of gravitational aids from Venus to slow down its lateral motion, allowing it to reach just 3.8 million miles from the sun’s surface.
“In this case, rather than accelerating the spacecraft, as in a typical gravitational assistance, Venus slows down the lateral movement so that the spacecraft can approach the sun,” explains NASA.
“As it finally approaches, the Parker Solar Probe will have lost much of its lateral speed, but gained a high overall speed due to the sun’s gravity.
“The Parker Solar Probe will pass over the sun at 430,000 miles per hour.”
At its closest approach, it will reach just 3.8 million miles from the sun’s surface, making it the only spacecraft to ever venture so close.