NASA’s interstellar probe spacecraft is the next to set on its voyage for the universe. Along with its partners, NASA has planned to launch the spacecraft to go as close to 1000 Astronomical Units from the sun. It aims to know more about the formation of the heliosphere. And also probe about how this heliosphere is evolving in the present times. Now the previous two spacecraft Voyager-1 and Voyager-2 did manage to get some information but still left many questions unanswered.
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NASA’s interstellar probe spacecraft-The Mission
The interstellar probe intends to find answers to just these open-ended questions. The primary question is how the sun’s plasma interacts with the gases in interstellar space? And how this interaction is creating the heliosphere? Then the point of interest for NASA scientists is the appearance of this heliosphere. NASA’s interstellar probe spacecraft is expected to snap pictures of the heliosphere. And will thus observe the other happenings that surround the heliosphere. Now, the heliosphere is of paramount importance to our solar system, as it acts as a protective gear for the sun. It shields it from extremely high cosmic radiation.
The local interstellar cloud
As we know as of now that our sun resides in the local interstellar cloud in our galaxy. But it is also traversing around the galaxy and thus happens to interact with different kinds of interstellar radiations. This may lead the sun to drift towards the edge of this cloud and could also bring many other changes. Changes like the sun could enter into another region of the interstellar space. And there are many regions in our galaxy as well as our space we have no idea about. Thus, we do not know what effect this would cast on the sun’s heliosphere. And in turn, its effect on earth, which humanity is a part of. The news is extensively covered on Physics.org.
Elena Provornikova is the interstellar probe heliophysics lead from the John Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. She quotes, “The Interstellar Probe will go to the unknown local interstellar space, where humanity has never reached before.”
