国产精品99一区二区三_免费中文日韩_国产在线精品一区二区_日本成人手机在线

NASA to launch spacecraft to take straight-on peek at sun's poles

Source: Xinhua| 2020-01-28 05:39:27|Editor: yan
Video PlayerClose

WASHINGTON, Jan. 27 (Xinhua) -- U.S. space agency NASA announced Monday that NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) will launch a new spacecraft to snap the first pictures of the sun's north and south poles.

The spacecraft Solar Orbiter is scheduled to be launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on Feb. 7, on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. It will use the gravity of Venus and Earth to swing itself out of the ecliptic plane so that it can take a first-ever bird's eye view at the sun's poles.

The ecliptic plane is the swath of space, roughly aligned with the sun's equator, where all planets orbit.

"Up until Solar Orbiter, all solar imaging instruments have been within the ecliptic plane or very close to it," said Russell Howard, space scientist at the U.S. Naval Research Lab. "Now, we'll be able to look down on the sun from above."

The only prior spacecraft to fly over the sun's poles was the Ulysses spacecraft developed by NASA and ESA. It was launched in 1990 and retired in 2009. Ulysses never got closer than Earth-distance to the sun and only carried instruments that measure the space environment immediately around the spacecraft.

Solar Orbiter will pass inside the orbit of Mercury carrying four in situ instruments and six remote-sensing imagers, which see the sun from afar, according to NASA.

Over the mission's seven-year lifetime, Solar Orbiter will reach an inclination of 24 degrees above the sun's equator, increasing to 33 degrees with an additional three years of extended mission operations. At closest approach the spacecraft will pass within 26 million miles (42 million kilometers) of the sun.

It has a titanium heat shield with a calcium phosphate coating that withstands temperatures over 480 degrees Celsius.

The Solar Orbiter is expected to have a straight-on view on solar winds from solar poles, thus resulting in more accurate data. Also, it may find what makes the 11-year cycle of sunspot waxes and wanes.

Solar Orbiter will be NASA's second major mission to the inner solar system in recent years, following the launch of Parker Solar Probe in 2018.

TOP STORIES
EDITOR’S CHOICE
MOST VIEWED
EXPLORE XINHUANET
010020070750000000000000011105521387380201
主站蜘蛛池模板: 营山县| 宁安市| 扬中市| 唐山市| 贵溪市| 静安区| 和田市| 昌吉市| 南靖县| 财经| 柘荣县| 元阳县| 灵台县| 三都| 赤峰市| 合水县| 肇庆市| 鄂伦春自治旗| 长乐市| 云阳县| 贺州市| 长治县| 福鼎市| 甘南县| 宜宾县| 克什克腾旗| 泽普县| 健康| 历史| 射洪县| 乾安县| 沙田区| 德化县| 田林县| 乌审旗| 左贡县| 万年县| 邵东县| 外汇| 龙口市| 永泰县|