New insights from the Sun by the Parker Solar Probe mission

Séminaire IPAG de Thierry Dudok de Wit (LPC2E Orléans), jeudi 7 janvier 2021, 11h00, IPAG seminar room

Parker Solar Probe, which was launched in 2018, is the first spacecraft to literally enter a stellar atmosphere. This NASA mission will ultimately come within 8.8 solar radii (0.04 AU) of the solar surface. The primary objective of Parker Solar Probe is to understand the mechanisms that generate the solar wind and cause solar and stellar atmospheres to be so much hotter than the surface. To do so it measures in situ properties of waves and particles, but also has an imager to view the corona.

I shall begin this presentation by addressing some of the huge technical challenges that had to be overcome before one could finally send a spacecraft into a region that is probably the most hostile but also the least well known of our heliosphere. As of today, Parker Solar Probe has already performed six solar encounters, providing a wealth of observations of the extended solar corona, which turns out to be much more structured than expected. In the second part of my presentation, I shall highlight some recent results.