NASA aims to uncover the mysteries of our sun. By 2018, the space agency will be sending it first unmanned mission towards the center of our solar system.
NASA plans to launch a daring mission to study the sun up close. The said mission will be dubbed as Solar Probe Plus, which will be utilizing a revolutionary space technology that will ensure the safety of the spacecraft as it would approach the gaseous ball of flame.
"This is going to be our first mission to fly to the sun. We can't get to the very surface of the sun, but the mission will get close enough to answer three important questions. You'd think the farther away you get from a heat source, you'd get colder. Why the atmosphere is hotter than the surface is a big puzzle," NASA's research scientist Eric Christian told Live Science..
The photosphere has an estimated temperature of 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit or 5,500 degrees Celsius. On the other hand, the sun's outer layers measure 3.5 million Fahrenheit or 2 million Celsius. Such difference continues to puzzle experts even up to this modern age.
Another question that the exploration aims to answer is the mystery behind solar winds. Experts still lack the proper answer on how does the sun blows a stream of charged particles in all directions at a million miles an hour. Moreover, the third part of the query would involve the reason behind the occasional emission of high energy particles by the sun, which poses a danger to unprotected astronauts and spacecraft.
This space mission if realized by 2018 will benefit the human kind and not just NASA itself. In order to make this historical and extraordinary space mission a success, NASA has designed a spacecraft that will adapt to the potential danger of the voyage.
The space agency will be using a 4.5-inch-thick carbon-composite shield that could withstand temperature outside the spacecraft, according to Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. To avoid a direct hit, the spacecraft will only be coming as close as 3.9 million miles or 6.2 million kilometers to the Sun, and well within the orbit of Mercury.
Watch here below discussion about the sun's temperature: