NASA’s spacecraft on way to sun bombarded with dust, debris in space
Zee News
Parker Solar Probe was launched in 2018 and has completed nine full orbits of the sun. Before its prime mission ends in 2025, it will complete another 15 orbits.
New York: NASA`s ambitious Parker Solar Probe spacecraft, studying the Sun at close proximity, is being bombarded with space dust and debris on its way to the Sun, according to a study.
Scientists at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado, Boulder and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) have examined collisions between the Parker Solar Probe spacecraft and dust.
Traversing near-sun space at up to 180 kilometres per second, Parker Solar Probe ploughs through the densest region of the zodiacal cloud. The zodiacal cloud is a thick, pancake-shaped dust cloud that extends throughout the solar system and is made up of tiny dust grains shed from asteroids and comets.
