Solar Week - Ask a Question

has a rocket ever gone to close to the sun before

Lauren FWMS

 Hi Lauren,

Spacecraft have certainly gone closer to the Sun that the Earth is.  There are several spacecraft that are 'sitting' between the Sun and the Earth, but they are at a spot which is only 1% closer to the Sun than the Earth is (although that's still a million miles!).  But there have been spacecraft that have gone to Venus and one that just passed around Mercury (called Messenger).

NASA is working on a mission called Solar Probe which could get very close to the Sun (to within about 10 solar radii, which is about 95% of the way from Earth).  The European Space Agency is working on a mission called Solar Orbiter that will also get pretty close to the Sun (about 50 solar radii at its closest point).

Best,

Christina

Hello Lauren,

The answer to that question is no. Its simply to hot, and radiation would also damage the spacecrafts systems at too close a distance.

The closest any spacecraft have come is going into orbit around Venus, or flybys of Mercury. There has been a polar orbiting mission of the Sun, though at a safe distance by a solar spacecraft known as Ulysses. You can see more on that here;

 http://ulysses.jpl.nasa.gov/

Also there is a spacecraft headed for orbit in a few years around Mercury, known as the Mercury Messenger mission, headed by Johns Hopkins University. The spacecraft recently flew by Mercury, take a look at the images it took by visiting the Mercury Messenger website;

http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/

Jim Stryder

Hi Lauren,

This is a surprisingly tricky question to answer.  Until several weeks ago, I would have given the same answer as the other Solar Week scientists regarding the closest approach to the Sun made by a spacecraft, and told you that the satellites sent to study the planet Mercury had made the closest approach to the Sun so far.  However, not too long ago, some of the scientists in our department were discussing this very topic.  The orbit of the planet Mercury has its perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) at about 0.31 AU (1 AU = 1 Astronomical Unit, the distance between the Earth and the Sun).   The Helios 2 spacecraft, which studied gamma ray bursts, was launched into a solar orbit with a perihelion of 0.29 AU, which is inside the orbit of Mercury.  It seems likely that the Helios 2 satellite has actually made the closest approach to the Sun by a spacecraft so far.

You can read more about Helios 2 here: http://heasarc.nasa.gov/docs/heasarc/missions/helios2.html 

Kris