Remarkable imagery shows NASA probe hit by a solar storm

A NASA spacecraft captured incredible imagery as it flew through an eruption from the sun recently. Pictures beamed back to scientists on Earth even show the fiery ejection “vacuuming up” space dust left over from the formation of the solar system.

The fly-through by NASA’s Parker Solar Probe took place on September 5 and NASA shared the imagery (below) on Monday.

Another first! Our Parker Solar Probe flew through an eruption from the Sun, and saw it “vacuuming up” space dust left over from the formation of the solar system. It's giving @NASASun scientists a better look at space weather and its potential effects on Earth.… pic.twitter.com/AcwLXOlI6m

— NASA (@NASA) September 18, 2023

The probe found itself in the middle of one of the most powerful coronal mass ejections (CMEs) ever recorded, according to the space agency, a chance event that gives scientists a treasure trove of potentially revealing data.

CMEs are immense eruptions from the sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona. They’re so powerful that they could potentially disrupt communications and navigation technologies such as satellites, and even knock out power grids on Earth.

Interplanetary dust comprises tiny particles from asteroids, comets, and planets, and is found throughout the solar system. This month you can even observe interplanetary dust in the form a faint glow called zodiacal light.

NASA said that learning more about how CMEs interact with interplanetary dust could help scientists better determine a CME’s speed of travel toward Earth, which in turn could lead to improvements in forecasting precisely when our planet feels their effects. What’s particularly exciting is that the close-up imagery gives scientists their best chance yet of characterizing dust dynamics in the wake of a CME, something that’s hard to do when observing such an event from a distance.

“These interactions between CMEs and dust were theorized two decades ago, but had not been observed until Parker Solar Probe viewed a CME act like a vacuum cleaner, clearing the dust out of its path,” Guillermo Stenborg, an astrophysicist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), which built and operates Parker, said in a report on NASA’s website.

NASA said that the CME displaced the dust to about six million miles from the sun, adding that it was replenished almost immediately by other interplanetary dust in the solar system.

The Parker Solar Probe was developed as part of NASA’s Living With a Star program to investigate aspects of the sun-Earth system that directly impact life and society. The spacecraft launched in 2018 and the mission is scheduled to last at least eight years.

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Parker Solar Probe detects a natural radio signal coming from Venus

During its third Venus flyby on July 11, 2020, Parker Solar Probe’s WISPR imager captured this view of Venus’ nightside from 7,693 miles away. NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Naval Research Laboratory/Guillermo Stenborg and Brendan Gallagher

A NASA spacecraft intended to study the sun has been doing some bonus science, revealing new information about Venus as it passes by the planet. It’s been a long time since a spacecraft has taken a direct measurement of the Venusian atmosphere — according to NASA the last time was almost 30 years ago when the Pioneer Venus Orbiter peered into the atmosphere in 1992 — and the study has revealed some fascinating facts about our planetary neighbor.

Gorgeous image of Venus snapped by the Parker Solar Probe on its way past

When flying past Venus in July 2020, Parker Solar Probe’s WISPR instrument, short for Wide-field Imager for Parker Solar Probe, detected a bright rim around the edge of the planet that may be nightglow — light emitted by oxygen atoms high in the atmosphere that recombine into molecules in the nightside. NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Naval Research Laboratory/Guillermo Stenborg and Brendan Gallagher

NASA has shared this gorgeous image of Venus, captured by the Parker Solar Probe on a flyby of the planet in July last year. The probe’s main mission is to explore the sun up close and learn about its corona, but it also regularly passes Venus as it uses the planet’s gravity to adjust its orbit. The researchers staffing the mission don’t let these flybys go to waste, and use the probe’s instruments to learn about Venus as well on their way by.

Parker Solar Probe on record-breaking approach to the sun

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is set to break a record tomorrow, becoming the closest-ever human-made object to the sun. The probe will break its own previous record, coming within 8.4 million miles of the sun’s surface and traveling at 289,927 miles per hour.

This will be the probe’s sixth flyby of the sun since it was launched in 2018. As it orbits around the sun, it gets gradually closer and closer with each pass, and over the summer it got an extra boost by using the gravity of Venus to adjust its trajectory. In July this year, the probe came within just 518 miles of the surface of Venus, and the gravitational assist from this maneuver allowed the probe to get 3.25 million miles closer to the sun than its last pass in June.