The Solar Orbiter’s Sun-study spacecraft will swing close to Venus on Saturday (September 3) and collect additional observations of our neighboring planet’s mysterious magnetic field.
The solar orbit The mission, led by the European Space Agency (ESA), is already being captured Closest photos of the sun. Throughout its life, the probe uses gravity Venus To adjust its orbit and sneak closer to our star. These regular oscillations across the hot, scorching planet also allow the solar orbiter to peer into the mysterious magnetic field of Earth’s sister.
Today’s flight will see the Solar Orbiter approach its closest point at 9:26 p.m. EDT (0126 GMT on Sept. 4), approaching 4,000 miles (6,400 km) from Venus.
During the maneuver, Daniel Muller, a solar orbit project scientist at the European Space Agency, told Space.com in an email that one of the probe’s instruments will take measurements of Venus’ arc shock. The bow shock is the sun-facing region of the planet’s magnetic field, where it meets solar windthe stream of charged particles emanating from the sun.
“It’s an interesting ‘bonus science’ that has enabled the design of the Solar Orbiter’s orbit, and we are doing our best to exploit it,” Mueller wrote.
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The upcoming flight will be the Solar Orbiter’s third planet Venus. Previous encounters also provided observations about the planet’s magnetism. unlike a landVenus does not have an inherent magnetic field caused by the movement of molten metal in the planet’s interior. Instead, the magnetic field of Venus is what scientists call an induced magnetic field, as a result of the interaction between The thick atmosphere of Venus and solar wind.
Measurements obtained during previous Venus flights (Opens in a new tab) In December 2020 and August 2021, he revealed that on the side of Venus facing away from the Sun, the magnetic field, although very weak, extends at least 188,000 miles (300,000 km) into space. The Solar Orbiter has also found that despite its weak and unstable nature, the magnetic field accelerates charged particles within Venus’ magnetosphere to speeds of more than 5 million miles per hour (8 million kilometers per hour).
Scientists have known the existence of the magnetic field of Venus Since the first spacecraft visited the planet (Opens in a new tab) In the sixties and eighties. However, there are still many unanswered questions about the origins and behavior of the domain.
The Solar Orbiter, launched in 2020, will have many other opportunities to contribute to answering these questions. The probe will return to Venus eight times over the course of nearly a decade during its space travels to use the planet gravity To turn its orbit outside the plane of the ecliptic, where the planets rotate.
These maneuvers will eventually allow the spacecraft to see the sun’s poles, which have yet to be fully explored. Polar regions are critical to the generation of the Sun’s magnetic field, which in turn drives 11-year cycle of the sun’s activitythe tides in the creation sunspotsAnd explosions and explosions. The exact mechanism behind this cycle and its varying intensity remains unknown.
The Solar Orbiter will have the best chance of answering these questions because it studies the star thoroughly as its activity builds toward the peak of the current solar cycle, which is expected around 2025.
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