TRADITION has been broken. NASA last week named one of its missions, a sun-skimming spacecraft, after a living scientist for the first time.
The Parker Solar Probe honours Eugene Parker, a retired US astrophysicist about to turn 90 years old. Earlier examples – Hubble, Planck, Fermi and Chandrasekhar – have all been named posthumously.
“We are about to make history,” said Thomas Zurbuchen of NASA’s science mission directorate, ahead of the announcement.
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You’ve probably never heard of Parker, but he is a stellar choice. His work focused on the solar corona, the tenuous outer atmosphere of the sun. Unlike the relatively balmy solar surface, which is a mere 6000°C, the corona roars at a few million degrees. But what gives it the energy to be so much hotter than the surface?
Astronomers have long suspected that the sun’s powerful magnetic fields play a part, but the precise mechanism remains mysterious. In the 1980s, Parker suggested that the culprit may be “nano-flares” – intense magnetic bursts popping off all over the sun’s surface and dumping energy into the corona. Such nano-flares are smaller versions of the immense solar flares that can reach Earth and fry our electronics and knock out satellites.
“It is easy to see why tradition honours science’s dead greats, but why not honour the living too?”
NASA’s probe will search for evidence of these, and examine the origin of the solar wind, . His thinking on that was vindicated and he was hailed a hero. So when the spacecraft’s first close encounter with the sun happens in 2024, it will be the crowning glory of a highly productive career. That will be the first in a series of passes to within six million kilometres of the surface of our star, travelling at several hundred kilometres per second, making it the fastest object ever launched. Reinforced instruments will sample the corona, revealing the secrets of one of the harshest places in the solar system.
Could this be the start of a new trend in honouring living scientists in mission naming? It is easy to see why tradition honours science’s dead greats, but why not recognise the living too?
This article appeared in print under the headline “A star turn”
