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Wake up… don't judge our actions, and we won't judge yours.

Unfortunately, your statement shows how you have trouble relating one public issue with another (fuel cost/space exploration). I'm sorry you are so misinformed and confused.

I will not fault you if you send a note to the tax man, and request that your personal tax dollars are not used on this mission. There are a lot of us who are all for it.

Anyway, it will be a wonderful mission if it can go ahead. So much in our lives depends on the Sun it should be somewhere near the top of our agenda to research our local star as much as possible.

Kind regards,
/Adam

This is a much better use of tax payers money than making million dollar bombs.

I say we all go and look at the Bollywood links from aju.

"Wake Up People, all these missions are money wasted–lets take care of the Earth that we live on and leave the rest to God Almighty.
People on Earth on slaving their azz off to pay taxes to send to Mars, no wonder gasoline is so high, it is going into space."

The fact that missions such as these go ahead is awesome. The fact that that pisses you off 'WAKE UP' makes me even happier. Probably twice as happy, actually. Oh, glorious day!

1) Those are particle temperatures and relates more to their velocities (i.e. spectroscopic measurements) – keeping in mind the environment of the corona is more tenuous than the best vacuum we can attain here on Earth, it's not like the probe will be boiled in a thick soup of plasma. The biggest problem will come from the EM radiation. As the intensity of solar light drops off with distance (1/r2), the ravages of the Sun at 4.1 million miles away will heat the probe to a couple of thousand Kelvin. It's not the solar particles that can cause the damage, it's the radiation.

2) They will be exposed to the Sun, but during periods when it is at a safe enough distance – during close approach they will be retracted.

3) It might get hit by a CME, but i'm sure the engineers will account for this. This risk can be reduced by sending the probe out at solar minimum, when activity is low…

hope that helps!

Cheers, Ian

The Venus flyby is used to shrink the spacecraft's orbit around the sun. It's too early to say what science, if any, would be done at Venus, but a flyby always offers the chance to test out your science instruments.

According to the info available about this missions so far, 2600 degrees is what they are expecting as the highest temps the spacecraft would have to withstand.

The solar arrays would retract or extend as the spacecraft swings toward or away from the sun.

I don't have data right at my fingertips about the probability of taking a hit from a CME, but it might be out there somewhere on the information superhighway. Anyone else have time to take a look?

Whether we are looking at distances in Imperial or SI, this really shouldn't distract from a wonderful article stuffed full of enthusiasm for this great mission. I think ferlongs per fortnight might be a good call John, as a Brit myself I can even work in inches per fortnight… we're a dynamic bunch

Oh yes, and Jorge, the Venus flybys will be needed to get the probe up to speed. As it will be getting pretty damned close to the Sun, it will need to be flying VERY fast to get it into a stable orbital trajectory. Will be nice if it can do some science around Venus, but this will most likely be in the form of analysing the interplanetary space rather than doing any planetary observations.

This kind of mission gives me the insentive to get back into solar research!

Nice one Nancy!

Cheers, Ian

q2: how will the solar panels collect their power if they have to hide behind the heat shield.

q3: is there data as to probability of getting hit by a cme? (I'm thinking statistics similar to the Wylie data for lighning strikes here on Earth).

If you used your brain for something other than being a brat, kerouac-wannabe, you might understand this simple fact.

Thanks.

And, John, don't you go putting silly ideas in her head, you hear? Behave!

At the very least convert these for the world at large that uses SI. We are actually the VAST majority out here. Not sure about the blog readers, but we might even be also a majority there.

Please.