This is really cool, but it feels kind of insulting to call this equivalent to landing people on the moon in 1969. To bring humans to the moon and back alive and healthy, with 1960s computer tech, seems a much more significant feat. Plus the huge risk that astronauts took, made very real by preceding and subsequent deaths and close-calls. Sounds like this will be an important accomplishment and undoubtedly technically difficult, and the speed record part is particularly cool. Howevert it's ultimately still an unmanned probe, which seems incomparable to a manned mission imo.
this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023
118 points (97.6% liked)
News
23275 readers
3454 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I am not a smart man, but 6.1 million km seems like really far away from something.
The sun is 1.4 million kilometers in diameter. 6 meter from a 1 meter diameter sphere is relatively close.
Also the sun's corona stretches out about 8 million kilometers from its surface, so for this probe its like its moving inside the earths atmosphere.
So.. pretty dang close.
Tfw the suns atmosphere is significantly wider than our planet, several times over
I am also not a smart man, but I'm surprised we can even get anything that close to the sun without all of it fucking melting.
Just gotta go at night when the sun's off
They put a mirror on the part that is in the suns light. Can't heat up if you reflect almost all the light that hits you.
I saw Sunshine too. Weird ending.
What's that?
For perspective because I didn't know either:
Mercury from sun: 49.93 million km
Earth from sun: 147.11 million km
Still sounds sensationalist to say it's like landing on the sun, but close on the solar system scale.
I was curious so I asked GPT. Pretty interesting stuff
The solar corona is the outermost layer of the Sun's atmosphere. Its outer boundary is not well-defined, and its extent varies depending on solar activity. However, on average, the solar corona extends several solar radii above the Sun's surface. One solar radius is approximately 696,340 kilometers.
During a total solar eclipse, when the Moon completely blocks the Sun, the outer parts of the solar corona become visible to observers on Earth. At that time, the corona can be seen extending far beyond the Sun's visible disk. The temperature of the solar corona is much higher than the temperature of the Sun's surface, and the reason for this temperature difference is still a topic of scientific research.
While the solar corona is not a fixed distance from the Sun's surface, it typically extends millions of kilometers into space. The exact dimensions can vary depending on solar activity, such as the solar cycle and the presence of solar flares or coronal mass ejections.
That is fucking amazing!
I can't wait to see what kinda strange shit comes out of this research.
Kaneda, what can you see!?
Nasa's Parker Solar Probe will race past the Sun ...
Wouldn't 'Icarus Solar Probe' sound way cooler? I mean, what could go wrong?