A Nasathe American space agency, hopes to receive the first communication from son solar parker this Friday (27). The unmanned spacecraft carries out a historic mission in which it attempts to make the closest approach to the Sun ever made by humanity.
The moment of greatest proximity between the spacecraft and the star is expected to occur around midnight this Friday. Since the approach began on Christmas Eve, however, Parker has been out of contact with Earth.
According to the agency, the signal that Parker must send to mission control on Earth is called headlight tone and it is he who will confirm the success of the flyover or point out any flaws. The beacon tone is a limited piece of data that conveys the overall condition of the spacecraft.
A. To get this close to the Sun, the spacecraft was equipped with a carbon foam shield 11.4 centimeters thick and 2.4 meters wide.
On Earth, before launch, the shield was tested and was able to withstand temperatures close to 1,400ºC. On Christmas Eve, the shield had to face temperatures of up to 980ºC — estimated NASA.
Furthermore, the agency equipped the probe to be capable of flying at 692,000 kilometers per hour, fast enough to go from Washington to Tokyo in less than a minute, according to NASA itself. If successful, the flyby would make the probe the fastest human-made object in history.
The immense set of data and images collected during the flyby will not be available to mission control until Parker moves away from the Sun’s orbit, which is expected to occur just three weeks later, in mid-January.
*With information from CNN international and Giovana Christ, from CNN in São Paulo
