On Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe will complete its final Venus gravity assist maneuver, passing within 233 miles (376 km) of Venus’s surface.
Parker’s Venus flybys have become boons for new Venus science, thanks to a chance discovery from its Wide-Field Imager for Parker Solar Probe, or WISPR.
But on July 11, 2020, during Parker’s third Venus flyby, scientists turned WISPR toward Venus in hopes of tracking changes in the planet’s thick cloud cover.
The WISPR images from the 2020 flyby, as well as the next flyby in 2021, revealed Venus’s surface in a new light.
“This is a major engineering accomplishment,” said Adam Szabo, project scientist for Parker Solar Probe at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Wednesday, November 1. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe will reach within 233 miles (376 km) of the surface of Venus on June 6, 2024, completing its last Venus gravity assist maneuver. Parker’s trajectory will be adjusted during the flyby to reach its final orbital configuration, which will bring the spacecraft to an unprecedented 3.86 million miles from the solar surface on December. 24, 2024. . It will come the closest anything made by humans has ever come to the sun.
A chance finding from its Wide-Field Imager for Parker Solar Probe, or WISPR, has turned Parker’s flybys of Venus into a valuable tool for new Venus research. The instrument observes minute details in the solar wind by peering out from Parker and away from the sun.
In order to monitor changes in the planet’s dense cloud cover, scientists aimed WISPR toward Venus on July 11, 2020, during Parker’s third flyby of the planet. Surprised by the pictures, part of the data from WISPR, which records visible and near-infrared light, appeared to be able to see through the clouds to the Venusian surface below.
Noam Izenberg, a space scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, explained that the WISPR cameras are able to see through the clouds to the surface of Venus, which glows in the near-infrared due to its extreme heat.
Vibrant through the clouds was Venus, sizzling at about 869 degrees Fahrenheit (about 465 degrees Celsius).
The 2020 flyby and subsequent 2021 flyby’s WISPR images provided a fresh perspective on Venus’ surface. However, they also sparked intriguing queries, and researchers have developed the Nov. 6 flyby to assist in responding to them.
The images of Venus are in good agreement with data from the Magellan spacecraft, displaying patterns of light and dark that match the areas of the surface that Magellan recorded during its radar mapping of Venus’ surface between 1990 and 1994. The WISPR data may have captured additional information, though, as some areas of the images seem brighter than others. WISPR may be detecting variations in age, where more recent lava flows have applied a new layer to the Venusian surface, or it may be detecting chemical differences on the surface, where the ground is composed of different material.
In contrast to the earlier Venus flybys, the Nov. Six flybys will provide additional context for assessing whether WISPR can assist in differentiating the physical or even chemical characteristics of Venus’ surface,” Izenberg stated.
Following the November. Six flybys will put Parker on track to reach the historic mission’s ultimate goal, which was first envisioned more than 65 years ago: to swoop within 3–8 million miles of the solar surface. Parker’s data will be mapping unexplored territory because no man-made object has ever come this close to a star. In this extremely close range, Parker will sever plasma plumes that are still attached to the sun. Similar to a surfer plunging beneath a roaring ocean wave, it is close enough to pass inside a solar eruption.
Adam Szabo, Parker Solar Probe project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, described the achievement as a “major engineering accomplishment.”.
