NASA’s Solar Probe Did the Impossible, Here’s How

The Parker Solar Probe just made a historic flyby of the Sun. For the first time, the satellite passed through the Alfvén Critical Surface, which is where the Sun's atmosphere ends. This milestone revealed a lot about the Sun, but can also teach us a little bit more about life on Earth.
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Solar wind is made up of streams of charged particles and gas that are propelled by the Sun at millions of kilometers per second throughout the Solar System. These particles can ultimately damage our satellites, like those used for GPS and phone calls. But one the most important questions that Parker needed to answer is where this Alfven Critical surface lies, and in 2021, it made a historic discovery

After spending five hours within the upper atmosphere, the probe observed that both the energy and pressure of the Sun’s magnetic field were stronger than that of the particles within it. This meant that the forces from the Sun were strong enough to maintain control of the particles, essentially keeping them close to the center of the sun.

However, when Parker rose further away, the reverse was apparent and the forces were no longer strong enough to trap the particles and they were propelled into the Solar System. This was evidence that Parker passed through the Alfven Critical surface, like flying into the eye of a Hurricane where it’s most calm, and then returning to a barrage of wind. And even more surprising the critical surface is not a perfect sphere, Parker detected that it’s actually made up of spikes and valleys.

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Read More:
How a rather mundane space storm knocked out 40 SpaceX satellites
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/02/12/spacex-starlink-explainer-storm-sun
When the second surprise solar storm hit, however, it was oriented in such a way as to cause the motion of Earth’s upper atmosphere to reverse direction, Skov said. The friction and energy of the two opposing forces released heat in quantities more than models had anticipated — similar to the frictional heat released when trying to stop and reverse a moving bicycle tire with your hand.

Switchbacks Science: Explaining Parker Solar Probe’s Magnetic Puzzle
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2021/switchbacks-science-explaining-parker-solar-probe-s-magnetic-puzzle/
When NASA’s Parker Solar Probe sent back the first observations from its voyage to the Sun, scientists found signs of a wild ocean of currents and waves quite unlike the near-Earth space much closer to our planet. This ocean was spiked with what became known as switchbacks: rapid flips in the Sun’s magnetic field that reversed direction like a zig-zagging mountain road.

Venus Shows Its Hot, Cloudy Side
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/25/science/venus-photos-nasa.html
The single camera instrument, known as the Wide-Field Imager for Parker Solar Probe, or WISPR, is not designed to look directly at the sun, which is far too bright, especially at close distances. Rather, WISPR peers to the side, at charged particles known as the solar wind that emanate from the sun at a million miles per hour.

Thumbnail Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben
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