NASA and European Space Agency launch solar orbiter, will take pictures of the Sun's poles for the first time

HIGHLIGHTS: The orbiter will try to find answers to the questions about the Sun that affect our solar system. Orbiter sent on Sunday will cover 4 crore 18 lakh km in 7 years. Spacecraft carrying orbiter weighs 2 tons, sent by 'United Launch Alliance Atlas V' rocket.

NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) launched the Solar Orbiter Mission to study the Sun. This orbiter will take the first pictures of the sun's north and poles. It was launched from Cape Canaveral Space Center in Florida at 9:33 am Indian time. It will cover a distance of about 4 crore 18 lakh kilometers in 7 years to get closer to the Sun.

The orbiter will try to find answers to all the questions about the Sun that affect our solar system. The program set for the orbiter involves examining the relation of charged particles flying continuously on the surface of the Sun, the flow of air, the magnetic field inside the Sun, and the heliosphere it produces.

Will cross the orbit of earth and venus

This solar orbiter is placed in a 2 ton heavy spacecraft. A 'United Launch Alliance Atlas V' rocket was used to take it to the Sun's orbit. In the next 7 years, it will travel about 418 million kilometers (260 million million miles) to get closer to the Sun. The orbiter will exit the ecliptic plane to capture photographs of the North and South Pole of the Sun. Rising above the orbit of Earth and Venus, it will be set in space in such a way that the view of both poles of the Sun can be seen. For this it will be rotated to 24 degrees.

Our attitude will change: NASA

"We don't know what we're going to see, but our outlook about the sun is going to change a lot in the next few years," said Teresa Nix-Chinchilla, deputy project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centrean Greenbelt Maryland.

Special heat shield

for the orbiter A special heat shield is designed to travel to the orbiter amid the scorching heat of the sun. It has a black coating of calcium phosphate. This coating is like coal sawdust, which was also used for painting in caves thousands of years ago. NASA said that special arrangements are being made for the telescope of the spacecraft to see through the heat shield.

Information about Sun will increase: ESA

ESA Deputy Project Scientist Yannis Jugnelis at the European Space Astronomy Center in Madrid said - these questions are not new, but we still don't know the basics about our star. Through these investigations, scientists want to know how the sun affects the weather of space. At the same time, the conditions created in space through this mission will also be studied, which can affect everyday technologies such as astronauts, satellites, radio and GPS.

NASA's Parker and ISRO's Aditya will also study the Sun.

NASA sent the Parker Solar Probe into the Sun's orbit in 2018. Its purpose is to study the outer corona of the Sun. At the same time, ISRO of India plans to send the first mission to Aditya to study the sun in late 2020.

Source: Web