The Parker Solar Probe, an engineering marvel, is designed in such a way that it can withstand the extremely hot environment around the sun known as the corona. But scientists are now concerned that the spacecraft is attaining damage -- not because of the scorching heat -- because of space dust.
The probe is also the fastest thing ever created by humans. But that extraordinary achievement comes at a price: the spacecraft is moving so fast that even a small particle of dust can cause significant damage.
Our solar system, as well as many other planetary systems in the universe, is littered with space dust. Asteroids and comets create tiny dust particles a quarter the width of a human hair that are forever engaged in a dance around the sun.
Parker, whirling around the sun at absolutely unfathomable speeds, collides with the grains on a regular basis, heating them up, vaporizing and ionizing them, and transforming them into plasma.
Parker is basically being assaulted by dust at such a high rate that its body is continually exploding with plasma.
A team of scientists from the University of Colorado, Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory studied the severity of these impacts using Fields, the probe's instrument for measuring magnetic fields, and Wispr, an imaging device that can take photos of the sun and study the density of electrons in its corona.
Metallic flakes and paint chips shattered from encounters with dust drifted and tumbled towards the spacecraft, according to the researchers. The navigational and scientific cameras aboard Parker Solar Probe captured photographs with streaks caused by the debris.
The study also mentions some debris scattered sunlight into the navigation cameras of the Parker Solar Probe, preventing the spacecraft from establishing its orientation in orbit. For a spacecraft that relies on perfect heat shield pointing to survive, this can be a dangerous prospect.
The Parker Solar Probe was launched in 2018 and has completed nine complete solar orbits. It will complete another 15 orbits until the end of its primary mission in 2025.
The results of the latest study are being presented by David Malaspina, from LASP, at the 63rd Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Plasma Physics on Thursday morning. You can find an abstract here.
