2023-06-17 07:38:50
In “Le billet sciences du weekend”, we approach the Sun: a space probe has observed the birth of the solar wind.
Mathilde Fontez, editor-in-chief of the magazine To epsilon, approaches very close to the Sun with NASA’s Parker probe, on a mission there. NASA’s Parker probe has indeed approached closer to the solar star, more than any probe had done before it.
franceinfo: The measurements of this probe show the birth of the solar wind, which blows to the Earth?
Mathilde Fontez: Yes, this probe flew away in 2018, it orbits the Sun getting very, very close. It entered the star’s atmosphere at the end of 2021. And it passed 8.5 million kilometers from its surface – sounds like a lot, but it’s more than 10 times closer than Earth, never a probe had never come so close.
Parker took images, measurements of the plasma, of the energetic particles, of the magnetic field. Then, we had to wait for these data to be analyzed by the teams of astrophysicists on the ground. The results are starting to roll in. The probe was able to see the birth of the solar wind.
It is this wind that comes to the Earth…
Yes, these are very energetic particles that bathe the entire solar system, all the planets, they form a sort of bubble. And the Earth, of course, bathes in this wind too. It is this wind that creates the aurora borealis, by exciting the molecules of the atmosphere. How is he born? What, on the surface of the Sun, triggers these streams of particles? How is it structured? It is to answer these questions that the Parker probe was launched.
And there, researchers have a beginning of an answer : it is a magnetic mechanism, on the surface of the Sun, which triggers the currents of particles. The probe recorded gusts of wind that exactly match the magnetic structure of the surface. It somehow imprints itself in the solar wind, which shows that it is the source of it. And then those puffs propagate all the way to Earth.
Could these discoveries help predict solar flares? We often talk about the risks caused by these eruptions for satellites in orbit, for example?
It is the idea that by finely understanding the formation of the solar wind, the mechanisms on the surface, we can predict these eruptions. Succeed in setting up solar weather. Currently, there are no reliable predictions. The only thing we can do is monitor and put the satellites on standby, as soon as we detect a solar flare, to prevent their electronic systems from being damaged by the flow of particles.
Let probe Parker will continue the observations. The next closest approach to the Sun is scheduled for 2025.
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