Footage of NASA spacecraft crashing into the Sun

During the August approach, the Parker spacecraft plunged through the Sun's atmosphere, capturing fleeting images of planets such as Mars and Earth.

Many space science lovers are excited when this week, NASA confirmed that the Parker probe has become the first spacecraft to "touch the Sun" during flight in April. In addition, NASA also released a video time. -lapse records the process of the ship plunging into the corona (the outer layer of the Sun's atmosphere) during the 9th approach to the Sun in August. The video is compiled from images taken by the WISPR instrument on board the ship. Parker taken on 8-12/8.

In the video, the Milky Way appears at 2 seconds in the background. The series of bright streaks that the Parker spacecraft rammed are actually coronal bands - giant rings of plasma and electrically charged gas connecting two opposing regions on the Sun. They are expanded by the solar wind and are so luminous because they are filled with electrons. They are usually only visible from Earth during eclipses.

Several planets in the solar system also appear in the video, although NASA has yet to confirm the specifics. According to astrophysicist Grant Tremblay at the Harvard - Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and two scientists Karl Battams and Andrew Phillips, viewers will in turn see Mars, Mercury, Venus, the Milky Way, and stars. Saturn, and finally Earth and Jupiter.

It sounds like the ship has seen a lot in just five days. However, this also makes sense because the Parker train moves at a very high speed, up to 529,200 km / h. It came close to the Sun and then flew away quickly, measuring the Sun's environment with a series of instruments behind a thick heat shield.

The Parker spacecraft still has 15 trips to the Sun and collects a huge amount of data in four years for scientists to analyze. When it completes its mission, people can learn more about the mysterious star that powers the Earth.