The mission, launched in 2018, plans to explore the sun and reveal some of its mysteries. Over seven years, the probe will travel through the solar atmosphere and come closer to the surface of our star than any previous spacecraft.
Venus is central to the success of the probe. The spacecraft uses the gravity of Venus as it moves around the planet, called the gravitational support, to help bend the orbit of the probe and bring it closer and closer to the sun. .
The spacecraft’s WISPR instrument, or Wide-field Imager for Parker Solar Probe, actively took images during the flight and captured the night side, or the side that looked away from the sun, of Venus. The statue was taken 7,693 miles away from the planet.
Bright streaks seen in the image are the result of space dust and cosmic rays, or charged particles, reflecting sunlight. The streaks look a little different depending on how fast the probe travels.
There is also a dark brown feature in the center of the image. Called Aphrodite Terra, the largest Highland area of Venus. The reason it looks so dark in the image is because it is at a temperature that is 85 degrees Fahrenheit lower than the surrounding areas.
The WISPR instrument was designed for the probe so that it can collect images of the solar corona, or outer atmosphere, in visible light. The imager can also capture the solar wind in action. The solar wind is a steady stream of energetic grains that emanate from the sun.
When he turned to look at Venus, WISPR surprised the team’s scientists. Instead of seeing clouds, the surface of Venus was revealed. Venus has a very thick atmosphere that has been difficult to cooperate with instruments on other spacecraft in the past.
“WISPR effectively captured Venusian surface thermal emissions,” Brian Wood, an expert and member of the WISPR team from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC, said in a statement.
What WISPR was able to do in visible light is similar to what Akatsuki captured of Venus in near-infrared, Wood said.
Angelos Vourlidas, the project scientist for WISPR at the Johns Hopkins applied physics laboratory in Maryland, coordinated an imaging campaign with the Akatsuki mission.
One of two things happens. WISPR is either sensitive to infrared light and picks that up as it passes Venus – which may open up opportunities to study dust around the sun, or the images look through an atmosphere Venus and straight down to the surface.
Parker Solar Probe made just the fourth flyby of Venus on Feb. 20, passing 1,482 miles from the planet’s surface, so the team plotted another set of observations on the Venusian night side. That data should be available by the end of April, according to NASA.
Each pass of the sun directs the probe to break its previous record, coming more than a million miles closer than the previous pass. These passes take the probe 6.5 million miles from the surface of the sun.
“We are very much looking forward to these new images,” said Javier Peralta, a psychologist from the Akatsuki team, who was the first to recommend Parker Solar Probe ‘s collaboration with the Japanese mission.
“If WISPR can sense the thermal dissipation from the surface of Venus and nocturnal – possibly from oxygen – at the planet ‘s arm, it can significantly contribute to studies on the Venusian surface.”