Research for Nasa Space App Challenge

 The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL) in Laurel, MD., is the
prime contractor for the spacecraft. In September 2010, NASA selected the Solar Probe Plus
mission for development. A launch of the mission is planned for 2018.
 NASA's first mission to go to the sun, the Parker Solar Probe, is named after Eugene Parker who
first theorized that the sun constantly sends out a flow of particles and energy called the solar
wind.
 On May 31, 2017, NASA has renamed the Solar Probe Plus spacecraft humanity's first mission to
a star, which will launch in 2018 as the "Parker Solar Probe" in honor of astrophysicist Eugene
Parker.
 Parker believed there was high speed matter and magnetism constantly escaping the sun, and that
it affected the planets and space throughout our solar system.
 This phenomenon, now known as the solar wind, has been proven to exist repeatedly
through direct observation. Parker's work forms the basis for much of our understanding
about how stars interact with the worlds that orbit them.
 The Solar Probe Plus science objectives are:

1) Determine the structure and dynamics of the magnetic fields at the fast and slow solar wind
sources.

2) Trace the flow of energy that heats the corona and accelerates the solar wind.

3) Determine what mechanisms accelerate and transport energetic particles.

4) Explore dusty plasma phenomena in the near-sun environment and their influence on the solar
wind and energetic particle formation.
 The main hunt of this project was related to the hunt of the answers of the following questions:
1) Why is the solar corona so much hotter than the photosphere?
2) How is the solar wind accelerated?
 The challanging objective of the mission is to explore the near-Sun environment for a
better understanding of solar physics. So far, no missions have penetrated closer to the
Sun than 0.3 AU (Astronomical Units).
 One concept need to be searched :
1) Jupiter gravity trajectory
2) Why it was dumped ?
3) How Venus gravity trajectory overcame its limitations?
 Two key technical challenges make a solar probe much more difficult than other missions:
1) The extremely high temperature and harsh environment in the Sun's proximity, which the
spacecraft cannot survive without adequate thermal protection
2) The extreme difficulty of getting close to the Sun, as an enormous amount of velocity must be
canceled out from the Earth orbital velocity in order for a probe to get close to the Sun.

 SPP(Solar Probe Plus) will sample the solar corona to reveal how it is heated and the solar wind
and solar energetic particles are accelerated.
  During the seven-year mission, seven Venus gravity assist (VGA) maneuvers(it means series of
movements. Meaning of the whole sentence: It will complete seven complete revolution around
the sun with the help of the gravity of Venus) will gradually lower the perihelion to <10
Rs(Radius of sun ~700,000 km), the closest any spacecraft has come to the Sun.
 Throughout the 7-year nominal mission duration, the spacecraft will spend a total of 937 hours
inside 20 Rs , 440 hours inside 15 Rs, and 14 hours inside 10 Rs, sampling the solar wind in all
its modalities (slow, fast, and transient) as it evolves with rising solar activity toward an
increasingly complex structure. SPP will orbit the Sun in the ecliptic plane and will not sample
the fast wind directly above the Sun's polar regions .
 (Needs to be Researched) However, the current mission design compensates for the lack of in-
situ measurements of the fast wind above the polar regions by the relatively long time SPP
spends inside 20 Rs This will allow extended measurement of the equatorial extensions of high-
latitude coronal holes and equatorial coronal holes. At a helioradius ~35 Rs , there are two
periods per orbit (one inbound(It’s original orbit) and one outbound(this means the new orbit that
the body sets in after travelling orbit)) when SPP will be in quasi-corotation with the Sun and
will cross a given longitudinal sector slowly. In these intervals, known as fast radial scans, the
spacecraft will sample the solar wind over large radial distances within a given flux tube before
moving across the sector. These measurements will yield additional information on the
spatial/temporal dependence of solar wind structures and how they merge in the inner
heliosphere.
 Getting directly to the Sun from Earth would require a launch energy C3 as large as 423 km2/s2.
This is beyond the capability of launch vehicles currently available (Atlas V, Delta IV Heavy) or
to be developed in the near future. The highest launch C3 ever achieved was 164 km2/s2 for the
New Horizons mission to Pluto (launch Jan. 2006).
 After an extensive analysis by NASA and JHU/APL, the trajectory option 5 was chosen as the
baseline trajectory for the new solar probe. The redesigned mission is named SPP (Solar Probe
Plus) for its significant advantages in both technical implementation and science
accomplishments as compared with the original Solar Probe mission.
 The mission design utilizes seven Venus gravity assists to gradually reduce perihelion (Rp) from
35 solar radii (Rs) in the first orbit to < 10 Rs for the final three orbits. The SPP orbit consists of
two primary orbit phases, a science phase (0.25AU to perihelion) and a cruise/data downlink
phase (0.25AU to aphelion).
 The mission design utilizes seven Venus gravity assists to gradually reduce perihelion (Rp) from
35 solar radii (Rs) in the first orbit to < 10 Rs for the final three orbits. The SPP orbit consists of
two primary orbit phases, a science phase (0.25AU to perihelion) and a cruise/data downlink
phase (0.25AU to aphelion).
 Table for the comparison of Solar Probe and Solar Probe Plus.

Parameter Solar Probe (2005)Solar Probe Plus (2008)

Minimum perihelion 4 Rs 9.5 Rs
Inclination 90º from ecliptic 3.4º from ecliptic
Number of solar passes 2 24
Total time within 20 Rs 96 hours 961 hours
Time between passes 4.6 years 88 to 150 days
Time from launch to first perihelion 4.1 years 3 months
Mission duration 8.8 years 6.9 years
Aphelion 5.5 AU 1 AU
 

For the first time in human history, a spacecraft has flown through the atmosphere of
the Sun. Sweeping through the super heated particles of the Corona. A momentous
moment that has provided scientists vital information on the nature of our closest star,
that may help us unlock its mysteries.
The Sun’s atmosphere, much like our own atmosphere, is composed of layers. Where
we have the troposphere, stratosphere and mesosphere, the sun has the photosphere,
the chromosphere and the corona.
We have a saying: hotter than the surface of the Sun, but the surface of the sun, the
photosphere, is not actually that hot. It ranges from about 6200 degrees celsius (6500
Kelvin) at the bottom and 3700 degrees celsius (4000 Kelvin) at the top.
That’s about the same temperature as a welding arc, and the air around a lightning bolt
can reach temperatures 5 times hotter than the photosphere.
What’s weird, is that the outermost layer of the Sun’s atmosphere, the corona, is
much much hotter than the photosphere. The corona, starting about 2100 kilometers
above the surface of the sun, reaches half a million degrees celsius, 80 times higher
than the surface.
That’s like walking away from a fire and the temperature getting warmer as you get
further away from it. This is a strange anomaly that makes the Parker Solar Probe’s
achievement even more impressive, as at first glance it’s easy to dismiss that the probe
“only” flew through the upper atmosphere, when in reality the upper atmosphere is
vastly hotter than the surface. The reason this occurs is one of the many unsolved
mysteries of the universe, and as such, is one of the primary missions of Parker Solar
Probe. To gather information on the magnetic fields and charged particles in this region,
and attempt to answer this riddle.
To understand the achievement of the Parker Solar Probe, let’s dive into the engineering
and physics of its solar mission. The first big problem facing the Parker Solar is actually
reaching the Sun. Despite the Sun’s gravity acting as the anchor for our entire solar
system, getting close to it is not easy.
In order to bring a satellite out of orbit around the Earth, we have to shed its angular
momentum so that it falls back to Earth(decrase its orbital velocity). The same has to
be done when trying to bring something out of orbit around the Sun, except in this case,
we are located 1 AU, or 150 million kilometers from the Sun, and traveling at 30
kilometers per second. And anything launching from Earth will orbit around the sun with
the same orbital velocity.
This means in order to achieve a tighter orbit to the sun we need to lower the
spacecraft's orbital velocity around the Sun, and this is an incredibly energy intensive
task, especially when you add the energy needed to escape earth’s gravity.
So, let’s say we want to first get our satellite from the Earth's surface into orbit around
Earth, this will require us to accelerate our satellite by around 9.2 km/s kilometers
per second relative to Earth’s surface. The satellite is now in orbit around earth,
and traveling with it at 30 kilometers per second around the Sun.
From here we need to perform something called a Hohmann transfer. This is an orbital
maneuver where we either change the spacecraft’s orbital energy to adjust it’s
perihelion, its closest approach to the Sun, or it’s aphelion, its furthest approach from
the Sun.
To visit an outer planet, like Mars, we want to increase our aphelion by adding to the
spacecraft’s orbital energy. While reaching an inner planet requires us to reduce our
perihelion by decreasing our orbital energy.
To reach Mars from earth’s orbit requires a delta v of around 2.9 kilometers per second.
To reach Venus requires around 2.5 kilometers per second. This is found using this
equation:
Where mu, this greek letter is the planetary parameter of the sun,
which is a product of the Sun’s mass. R1 is the orbital radius we are starting from,
in this case Earth’s distance from the sun at 150 million kilometers, and r2 is the desired
perihelion or aphelion. If we calculate the delta v required to reach the solar parker
probe's closest approach of 6.2 million kilometers. This would require a delta V of 21.4,
over 8.5 times greater than the delta V required to reach Venus.
That’s an incredibly high delta V. One beyond the capabilities of any rocket ever made.
But, on December 8th 2018, the Parker space probe launched from Cape Canaveral
aboard the Delta IV heavy, the world’s second highest capacity rocket in the world,
second only to the Falcon Heavy.
To give the probe an extra push, the Delta IV was fitted with a special solid rocket
third stage, providing an additional 3 km/s of delta v for the typically two staged rocket
design.
Yet, even with this added power, the probe would never have gotten close to the Sun.
To achieve it’s record breaking flight, one seventh that of the previous record hold
of Helios 2, the Parker Solar Probe completed an astounding 5 gravity assists by Venus
with an additional 2 flybys due in 2023 and 2024. This number of flybys was needed
because Venus is a relatively low mass planet. The magnitude of velocity change a
planet can provide is largely determined by its gravity, determined by its mass. In fact,
the original plan for the probe was to do a single planetary assist by Jupiter, which
would have brought the probe 3 times closer to the Sun, but this trajectory came with
some issues. Because Jupiter's orbit is so much further from the sun, the sunlight
reaching the panels at its aphelion would have been 25 times dimmer, requiring much
larger solar panels to power the spacecraft. This poses an issue when the spacecraft
makes its way around Jupiter and begins to accelerate towards the Sun. The heat of the
Sun would destroy the solar panels, and at this size they could not retract and hide
behind the sunshield. Other options were available.
A radioisotope thermal generator could have been used, but would have driven
the cost, weight and complexity of the spacecraft up significantly.
The real selling point for this radical new flight trajectory was the added time and data
it would provide scientists to fulfill the probe's mission, to study the Sun.
With the original Jupiter plan the probe would have had just 100 hours inside the
desired zone around the Sun, completing just 2 solar passes before the probe reached
the end of it’s 8 year mission duration.
While the new lower orbit plan would mean the Parker solar probe would take less than
150 days to complete its orbit around the Sun, allowing scientists to gather over 900
hours worth of data over the probe's 24 orbits around the Sun. The change in plan came
be with a change of design, moving away from the original conical shaped heat shield to
the familiar and compact flat shield. This shield is primarily constructed from 11.4
centimeter carbon foam. A truly fascinating material developed by one of the most
prolific material innovation labs, Ultramet. Under a scanning electron microscope the
carbon foam looks like this. An incredibly porous material, dominated by open space,
making its internal volume 97% empty space, providing the heat shield fantastic
insulation properties, while also benefiting from carbon's thermal stability.
Next a carbon carbon composite, which is made by combining graphite with an organic
binder, such as pitch or an epoxy resin. This mixture was applied to each side of the
foam, before being super heated to transform the binder into a pure form of carbon.
Creating a carbon-carbon composite. Finally a white ceramic paint was applied to the
Sun facing side to reflect as much of that heat away from the heat shield before it had a
chance to even enter the labyrinth of carbon beneath. From here the rest of the
spacecraft, besides a few specialized sensors and solar panels, had to be designed to
fit within the umbra, or shadow, of the shield. There are several instruments that bravely
peak out beyond the safety of the heat shield. Like the solar probe cup, one of the many
sensors on board. This thing is easily the most impressive bit of technology aboard.
Completely unprotected by the sunshield, its designers had to get very creative with
materials. The solar probe cup is a faraday cup, which is a device that can count and
measure the properties of electrons and ions coming from the Sun, essentially giving
the spacecraft the capability of studying solar winds and mass ejections of particles
coming from the Sun. This is the cross section of the solar probe cup. It essentially
works by applying an electric field over the grid at the cup's opening. By varying the
voltage, we can select or filter out particles that can enter the cup, giving us more data
on what is causing current as these charged particles strike the collecting plate at the
bottom of the cup. It’s a very simple device in practice, but with the temperatures it’s
facing, 1400 degrees Celsius, just below the melting point of pure iron, the solar probe
cup needed some innovative engineering. The first challenge was selecting a material
for the electric grid that generates the selecting electric field at the entrance of the cup.
This grid needed to be conductive and heat resistant, while also being machinable to
create the tiny 100 micron spaced grid. Tungsten was chosen, the same material used
in incandescent light bulbs here on earth,as they are capable of surviving the extremely
high temperatures needed to generate light. Tungsten light filaments operate at
temperatures as 3000 degrees celsius, so are more than capable of surviving these
temperatures, however, machining tungsten into a grid this fine is difficult.
Micron scale machining like this is not done with traditional tools. You would
immediately break the grid with the force required to shave the metal away. Instead
lasers are typically used to etch away material, but because tungsten is so heat
resistant, lasers would not be capable of melting the tungsten to form the grid. Instead
acid etching was used. Next we needed electrical cables capable of supplying the grid
with power, and carrying electrical signals away from the collecting plate. The two most
commonly used conductors here on earth, copper and aluminum, would turn to a pool
of molten metal in these conditions, so these were most definitely not an option.
Any conducting cables in this part of the spacecraft had to be made out of niobium C-
103, a special alloy of 89% niobium 10% hafnium and 1% titanium. All the external
casing components were also constructed from this exotic aerospace material.
Normally wires would be insulated from outer casings with plastic, but this obviously
wasn’t an option for the Parker Space Probe, and the engineers were forced to use
sapphire to ensure the niobium wires were insulated.[15] These are some extremely
exotic materials to perform what is a relatively mundane job here on earth.
Other portions of sensors peaking beyond the sunshield are built in a similar manner.
The
magnetic field measuring instruments hidden behind the shield need antennas that
reach
beyond the sunshield in order to make it’s measurements of the Sun’s magnetic fields.
These 4 antennas are also made from niobium C-103. [16]
The solar panels were the next challenge. While cruising through it’s distant orbit
around the Sun, the spacecraft can fully deploy it’s solar panels without issue, but as
the probe begins its sweep towards the Sun heat will become an ever growing issue.
This
can be counteracted somewhat by retracting the solar panels, but the spacecraft needs
to maintain some power to operate it’s scientific equipment during this vital stage of
flight.
Here two smaller secondary panels remain sticking out in view of the Sun and are
cooled with
water, which is pumped through the solar panels and into these black radiators
attached to
the titanium truss just below the sunshield.
This truss is exceptionally light for how big it looks. The entire truss only weighs
22.7 kilograms (50 pounds) [17] , which even for low density titanium is very low for the
size of the truss. The engineers at NASA have clearly triple checked their stress
calculations
to ensure this thing could use as little material as possible, which of course saves
launch
weight, but also minimizes the material available to conduct heat from the heat shield to
the
spacecraft bus.
Testing these systems in the heat they are expected to meet is difficult on earth. The
Odeillo Solar Furnace is our best approximation of the environment they would need to
endure.
This facility, built on a hillside in rural France, uses 10,000 adjustable mirrors to
focus light onto one concave mirror. The facility is capable of reaching temperatures as
high
as 3500 degrees celsius, over double the temperature that even the sunshield will
experience. Parts
like the faraday cup and sunshield were placed in the focal point of this concave mirror
and exposed to the temperatures they will need to endure. However, components like
the
faraday cup also needed to be tested while performing their sensory tasks, and for this
the engineers need a particle accelerator to simulate the electrons and ions it will
encounter from solar wind. Combining a particle accelerator with this solar furnace was
not
an option, so the researchers at the University of Michigan came up with the bright idea
of
using 4 high powered IMAX projectors to simulate the heat of the sun, and they found
that the
faraday cup actually performs better when heated, as the heat decontaminates the
system.
Much of the data we have received from these instruments is of little interest to the
average
space enthusiast. Raw data that will provide scientists with valuable clues to the nature
of the Sun, but there is one sensor on board relaying images back to Earth that we can
all enjoy.
During a solar eclipse, we can observe a beautiful phenomenon, bright loops of light
dancing
around the Sun. These fantastic patterns are created by glowing electrons, sailing
around
the Sun on magnetic field lines, distorted by solar winds. [18] We have been able to
observe the streams of high-energy electrons from Earth and our solar observatories
parked
in Lagrange point 1, but we have never, until very recently, been able to observe them
from
up close.
As the Parker Space Probe dipped into the Corona for its ninth encounter with the Sun,
it began recording from its wide view imager, here on the spacecraft. The images it
delivered
look like a passenger's view of a passing snowstorm a night. Bright sub-particles
streaming by the probe as it dips into the eye of the storm. Beautiful images that no
doubt are giving scientists unparalleled data on the nature of the coronal streamers.
The Parker Space Probe has many more rendezvous with the Sun, with the next due in
September
of 2022, and with another 2 Venus flybys, the Parker Space Probe will be breaking its
records in 2023 and 2024, bringing us even closer to the Sun.
[19]
And while we are getting closer to the Sun in our skies, we are also getting closer to
recreating the Sun here on earth for boundless fusion power.
Important terms That we need to describe:
1) Hohmann Transfer:
It is the elliptical orbit transfer that requires the least
total change in velocity, but it is also the transfer that
takes the most time.
It is possible to speed up the transfer by making the first
delta V higher. This results in a “larger” transfer ellipse.
To circularize the orbit at the desired final altitude, may
require a “deceleration” or “negative delta-v”. This
velocity change will still require a motor burn, but in a
direction that will slow down the spacecraft. However,
the “Total Delta V” will be the sum of the absolute
values of the two velocities.

Scripting
1. .Rather than just giving one interface, we will
compartmentalize the whole thing into different
sections. According to my research, I found that
calculations are less likely to be shown. There are
many factors for this not to be possible. One of the
reasons is, the NASA Space App Challenge is saying
to make anything that will make any of the
youngsters know the full journey of the Solar Parker
Probe.
2. The main thing that we need to portray are:
 i. The Story part:
a) How humanity was trying to make the solar
probe mission successful?
b) What were the hardships that a solar probe
mission had faced?
c) What are the potential challenges?
d) How SPP was designed at first?
e) How was the final design of the SPP?
(Highlight the changes made from the
previous versions)
f) The whole journey
ii. Accomplishments:
a) What SPP has done till now?
b) Description of its discoveries
iii. Present conditions of the SPP
a) Live counting of the hours spent by the SPP
from its launch
b) Live tracking of the orbit

iv. Defining the scientific terms that are going to

be used.
What we basically need to do is, We have to
create a visual presentation of what really the
term given below means:

a) Solar winds, aurora

b) Earth’s magnetosphere and ionosphere
c) The Lagrange Point
d) Hohmann transfer orbit
v. Description of the satellite
We need to showcase a 3D model of the
satellite. We have to explain every possible
parts of that satellite in simpler way.
The main feature that helped the SPP model
to be successful.