It’s always sunny for heliophysicists, but especially so now.
The Solar Orbiter spacecraft, a collaboration between the European Space Agency and NASA, launched yesterday (Feb. 9), less than two weeks after the first public image from a massive new solar telescope showed off the structure of our star in more detail than humans have ever seen. On that same day, Jan. 29, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe made its closest swing pass the sun to date — a record it will continue to break until 2025.
“It’s a great time to be a heliophysicist; we’re launching lots of new missions,” Nicky Fox, head of NASA’s Heliophysics Division, told Space.com. “It’s a very strategic way that we’re looking at this system [of instruments], as one large observatory.”
Although the three missions weren’t designed as a suite, they complement one another well. The Parker Solar Probe, which launched in August 2018, is flying closer to the visible surface of the sun than any spacecraft to date. That trajectory carries the spacecraft deep into the sun’s atmosphere, called the corona, where the probe’s instruments focus on the spacecraft’s immediate surroundings, measuring magnetic fields and particles of plasma, the charged soupy state of matter that makes up the sun.
Solar Orbiter won’t fly as close to the sun, but it brings unique skills. First, it carries two types of instruments. One set, like Parker’s, will study the spacecraft’s surroundings; the other, a set of telescopic instruments, will observe the visible surface of the sun itself at a distance. And partway through its mission, Solar Orbiter will leave the belt around the sun’s middle, called the ecliptic, and begin circling the sun at a tilt, allowing the spacecraft to use those telescopic instruments to produce the first-ever images of the sun’s poles.
The National Science Foundation’s Inouye Solar Telescope is stuck here on Earth, and construction is still underway. But once all of its instruments are operational, there will be plenty more images like the “caramel corn” picture that scientists published in January — the highest-resolution solar image to date. “The Inouye Solar Telescope is a microscope on the sun,” Valentin Martínez Pillet, director of the National Solar Observatory, which runs the facility, told Space.com. The observatory will also measure the wavelengths of light emitted by the sun and decipher the magnetic signature of light that is under the influence of the sun’s magnetic field.
Although the three projects are separate endeavors, both scientists said they and their colleagues are awfully excited about pulling all the data together.
We have so few close-up observations of the sun that being able to compare two separate locations is automatically valuable, no matter where each spacecraft is. Solar Orbiter’s final schedule was dependent on its precise launch date, but as mission personnel evaluated how each timetable aligned the spacecraft with the Parker Solar Probe’s close approaches, they found intriguing opportunities regardless of the launch date, Fox said.
The Inouye Solar Telescope is even easier to integrate into an observational program, Martínez Pillet said; its personnel know precisely where the two spacecraft will be at any given time and can match up the telescope accordingly.
Combining the data from all three observatories is vital for scientists to accomplish the goal that drives the missions: to understand the sun and its influence throughout the solar system. The impacts of the sun’s antics ripple across the solar system as a set of phenomena called space weather.
In Earth’s neighborhood, space weather can interfere with the technology modern society is ever more reliant upon, particularly navigation and communication satellites. Space weather is also a hazard for astronauts traveling farther from Earth, as it can harm both their technology and their bodies. Ultimately, solar scientists want to be able to predict space weather in much the same way meteorologists predict terrestrial weather. “We are 50 or 100 years lagging from what terrestrial weather is in terms of prediction,” Martínez Pillet said.
That’s because scientists just don’t know enough about how the sun works. “We’re able to predict a single second on the sun,” he said. “I’m exaggerating — well, no, I don’t think I’m exaggerating. We’re not able to have any realistic predictive capabilities today, but as soon as you get the physics right, then you start being able to develop predictive capabilities.”
One particular challenge in understanding space weather is the sheer distance involved, and that’s where the trio of missions will be valuable, Martínez Pillet said. “One space-weather event has a combination of scales,” he said. “It’s triggered at really small scales, and it’s a huge thing that propagates all over the heliosphere and probably can hit several planets at the same time.” But by the time space weather reaches Earth, it’s been influenced by millions of miles of space; it’s much fresher where the Parker Solar Probe and the Solar Orbiter can study it.
(Image credit: NSO/NSF/AURA)
There’s another reason to understand space weather: It could tell scientists where to look for signs of life elsewhere in the universe. After all, while we humans have a soft spot for the sun, it’s just a star like any other — which means that scientists can apply what these three missions discover to all the stars we’ll never be able to see as clearly. And while space weather is vexing to Earth, it could be deadly in solar systems that surround smaller, more active stars.
And there should be plenty for the trio of projects to study in the coming years. Right now, the sun is pretty quiet, but over the next five or six years, the sun’s activity will increase — and both the Parker Solar Probe and the Solar Orbiter will be on hand to see what happens during that period.
“They are really, truly voyages of discovery, and we’re doing fundamental physics and understanding how a star works,” Fox said.
Of course, even three high-powered missions won’t solve every mystery about the sun.
“We know right now what we don’t know, but we’re going to find a whole lot more things that we don’t know,” Fox said. “That’s why it’s nice that these missions are so long, so you have time to develop these new questions, this new thirst for knowledge.”
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
