In 2018, Human ‘Approach’ to the Sun

United States Space Agency, National Aeronautics and Space Administration. (NASA) will implement an ambitious mission, sending unmanned spacecraft directly towards the Sun.

The project is expected to be able to answer important questions about our solar system.

Car-sized aircraft will be deployed to the Sun’s atmosphere within a range of 4 million miles from the surface of the Sun. The hard task carried by satellite – to explore areas that had never been visited by human-made spacecraft.

This mission to the Sun is named Solar Probe Plus and scheduled to be launched in 2018.

NASA has selected five investigators in the science that will unlock the greatest mysteries of the Sun – just as the plane passed Sun’s atmosphere.

“This project opens a space for human intelligence to go to anywhere in outer space – which have never explored by any aircraft before,” said Lika Guhathakurta, Solar Probe Plus program scientist at NASA headquarters in Washington, as disclosed Daily Mail, September 6, 2010.

“For the first time, we will be able to touch, feel, and smell the Sun.”

When the spacecraft touched the Sun, a revolutionary plane’s carbon-shield should be able to survive in the fierce hot temperatures, around 1400 degrees Celsius. Also cope with the explosions of intensive radiation.

Then, the plane will be ‘direct dealing’ with the Sun – enabling scientists to understand and study the radiation environment for the benefit of subsequent exploration missions.

“Experiments carried out by Solar Probe Plus are specifically designed to answer two questions about the physics of the Sun. First, why the sun is very hot outer atmosphere than the surface we can see? And, what prompted the activity of the Sun affects the Earth and solar system?

“We’ve struggled with this question for decades. This mission should end up with an answer.”

In 2009 then, NASA invited a number of researchers to submit proposals. From the 13 who entered, five of them will receive fund U.S. $ 180 million totally that designated for initial analysis, design, development, and testing related to this project.

Investigation of Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Proton Alphas in particular will calculate the abundance of particles around the Sun – there are electrons, protons, and helium ions – and measure their properties.
Also prepared a special cup to catch a few particles of the Sun, to be tested directly

Meanwhile, a telescope set up to create a 3D image of the corona, or crown of the Sun. This experiment will see the circle of the sun and provide 3D images of clouds and shock-waves-flow experienced by the aircraft.

This experiment also serves as a giant dust detector, records the voltage signal when the aerospace-dust-specks hit a plane’s antenna.

Another experiment from Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio will look at the elements in the atmosphere of the sun using a spectrometer to weigh and sort the ions around the plane.