planet mercury

Hello friends! , I am shubham from india, and this is spaceinfinite, whwere I share interesting facts about space, time planets, universe,etc.

I also have a youtube channel named ‘ space infinite’ related to this where I share similar facts to my audience in hindi, so if you belong to india then consider visiting my channel.

Before starting I would like to mention that there is my video if you scroll down on the similar topic i.e mercury , so you could watch it also as I have explained similar things in the video.

So… lets start..

Friends!  As we all know that mercury is the smallest as well as the nearest planet to sun in our so called solar system. Lets talk about some basic information related to mercury.

The orbital period of mercury around the sun on its orbit is just 87.97 earth days, the reason we all know , as it is the nearest to the sun among all the other planets, its obviously the fastest orbiting planet as well as the planet with least orbital period, wait! Did I mentioned the speed at which it revolves around the star? Hmm.. its 47.3km/s  , whoa its too fast! Even faster than a bullet!.

Friends as we all know that almost all the planets in our solar system are named after a roman god, so is true for mercury also, the mercury was named after a roman deity ‘mercury’, who is the messenger of gods.

Do you  know that none of the planets orbit is accurately circular, all of them rotate on an elliptical orbit, the mercury’s orbit is the nearest to the circular orbit, but its also not circular, as the eccentricity of mercury is 0.205, so it has an elliptical orbit. Here I would like to mention that in astronomy if the eccentricity of an object or its path is between 0 to0.7 then its elliptical and if its eccentricity is 0 (zero), then its perfect circular.

Now lets talk about the aphelion and perihelion of the mercury from the sun, friends aphelion is the farthest point of any object from the body its orbiting due to being gravitationally bound  to it.

And perihelion is the nearest point of the object from the object its revolving.

So aphelion of mercury from the sun is 69,816,900 kms .

And perihelion of mercury from the sun is 46,001,200 kms.

The mercury has no natural satellites or moon.

the mass of mercury is about 0.055 times the mass of earth, and its surface gravity is just 3.7 m/s^2

and its escape velocity that is the minimum speed at which any object should attain to escape its gravitational field is  4.25 km/s.

surface pressure of mercury is less than 0.5 pascals.

And its surface temperature fluctuates between 200k to 340k, the reason for it , is that the mercury is a tidally locked planet thus as a result it rotates in a unique way in solar system.

The planet rotates on its axis exactly one time for every two revolutions it makes around sun.

Because mercury is a tidally locked planet , so its one side  faces the intense  heat of sun and while other remains  in darkness  for a long time as its rotation is very slow on its axis.

Because mercury is so small thus it is not capable of holding its atmosphere , thus it has no atmosphere to retain heat. Thus the temperature difference between its dark side and solar facing side ranges from  -173 degree Celsius to 427 degree Celsius.

Internal structure

Now lets talk about the internal structure of the mercury.

So, as we all know that mercury is a terrestrial planet  i.e  a rocky planet.

It also comprises of three layers namely, crust,mantle,core.

When talking about crust , the crust of mercury is way thicker than that of our earth that is 100 to 300 kms thick!. It mainly comprises of solid silicates.

When talking about mantle , the mantle of the planet is the next layer under the crust and its neary 600km thick. It comprise of solid iron sulphide .

 Now  the next layer comes core with 1800 km of radius. The core comprises of two parts , namely outer core and inner core, the outer core mainly comprises of solid iron sulphide. And the inner core is completely liquid metal.

The radius of the mercury is just 2,439.7 km/s.

When talking about the total composition of minerals on the planet , the mercury comprises of 70%metallic minirals  and 30% silicate materials.

Did you know that mercury has the highest iron content in our solar system.

the mercury has been geologically inactive for billions of years  it could be said because of presence of craters on the planet that are easily visible from space.

The planet has some wave like structures which look like wrinkles , these are called  lobate scarps and were formed when Iron core cooled and contracted. This data was taken by NASA’s messenger spacecraft that was launched in 2004 and it orbited mercury 4000 times in four years before crashing on its surface.

parker solar probe

The probe

Hello, friends I am shubham and this is spaceinfinite . the place where I tell you about interesting space related stuff. So stay tunned because today I am going to share some information about NASA’s  solar mission of ‘parker solar probe’ which is surely going to be a historical space mission in the history of human kind.

So friends, NASA  officially  announced  the mission back in 2009, which was a source of curiosity for peoples that how NASA could send a probe to a huge fireball, in front of which our earth or any other planet in our solar system is nothing , so how could NASA send a spacecraft which could not only survive the intense heat of our sun, but also work properly and gather the information required by the scientists about the nearest star to our planet . but on 12^th august 2018 , NASA proved that it could be done by launching the parker solar probe on a long journey to our sun in order to understand it.

So friends what you think that how  scientists would be able to do that , lets talk about it .

Starting from the origin , friends I would like to mention that parker solar probe was first named as solar probe only , but later on NASA decieded to rename it to ‘Parker solar probe’ in order to give tribute to mr.   Eugene parker , professor in  university of California.

Parker solar probe ‘s aim is to reach the Corona of the sun , which is insanely hot place, even far away hotter than the surface of the sun, as per the scientific measurements the surface temperature of sun is approx  5,500 degree Celsius. But the temperature of Corona is about a million degree Celsius!!!  Well I don’t really know that how it could be possible but scientists have given many theories regarding this, but I don’t  think  any of them could be considered completely true.

The parker solar probe will approach within the 8.86 solar radii  i.e  6.2  million killometeres or 3.85 million miles  near the photosphere i.e the surface of the sun. well it sounds that the probe is not really close enough to the sun , but friends trust me it is insanely near to that giant fireball .

Did I mentioned the speed at which the probe will travel towards the star?

Well its 7,00,000 km/hr  i.e  7 lakh km/hr. that is incredibly fast speed and officially the fastest moving object made by the human kind ever, that’s a proud moment , isn’t it?

Talking  a bit technically , the parker solar probe mission is a heliophysics  mission, which means the mission which will include the complete study of the sun, whether it be inside the sun or outside , its neighboring environment and everything related to it, in short it is the study of complete physics about the sun. which would be very helpful in studying  the working or mechanism of  not only our sun but also other stars in our universe, specially the medium sized stars like our sun.

The structure and work

Well talking about the dimensions of the probe , so the launch mass of the probe was 685 kgs and the dry mass is 555 kgs. Its almost the mass of an average car.

NASA launched the probe from the Cape Canaveral air force station, Florida on 12^th of august 2018.

The orbit of the probe around the sun is of about 88 days.

Now comes the most important question that how would the probe will withstand the intense heat  of our sun ,  so here’s the answer to this.

Well the probe is protected with a solar shield of 2-3 metres which of hexagonal shape, which is about 11.4 cm thick . the shield is made up of reinforced carbon-carbon composite which could easily withstand the temperature of about 1370 degree Celsius.

Friends solar radiation in the corona is about 475 times more than that to the solar radiation on the earth’s orbit.

The spacecraft systems and scientific instruments are placed in the central position  behind the shield’s shadow. As the shield would be only at the solar facing side , and scientist would not like the instruments to face the sun directly as it would cause the instruments to destroy completely.

I would like to mention that the parker solar probe is the most autonomous probe ever .

As the distance of sun from the earth is about 150 million kms, so the radio communications from the earth to the probe would require about 8 minutes to reach the probe, and to make the probe work properly and to keep instruments safe from being  in direct contact from the sun, the probe should change its direction continuously in order to keep the solar shield to face the sun directly and avoid the instruments to be burned . and it was not a good idea to control the probe from the earth , so the scientists and engineers decided to make the probe nearly completely  autonomous machine , so that the things could be done smoothly and  right.

Friends ,  the main power source of the probe is obiviously solar panels, but it would not be a good idea to make solar panel face the sun all the time, so the panels wold face the heat and gather energy for a short time and get inside the probe , in order to avoid burning the probe  also include the pumped- fluid cooling system to maintsain operating temperature of the solar panels and instruementations .

Goals

When talking about the tasks to be performed by the probe then it includes a lot of tasks which are assigned to the probe.

1.       The first task of the probe is to trace the energy flow that heats the corona and accelerates solar winds .

2.       Second task is to determine the structure and dynamics of the magnetic fields and find out the source of origin of solar winds.

3.       The third task is to determine that what mechanism accelerate and transport the energetic particles.

For performing such tasks many systems are included in the probe which are:

1.       FIELDS:  To measure the electric and magnetic fields around sun.

2.       ISOISl: This investigation system will measure the energetic electrons , protons, and heavy ions.

3.       WISPR: optical telescopes that will acquire image of corona and inner Heliosphere.

4.       SWEAP: To  count the electrons, protons and helium ions and measure their properties such as velocity, density, temperature.

5.       HelioSPP: theory and modeling investigation for good results from the mission.

So, friends these were the five major tasks to be performed by the parker solar probe.

Hope you liked the information about the parker solar probe.

Keep visiting the spacinfinite.blogspot.com  for more space related interesting  content.