Congratulations! At 7:43 on October 9, my country's solar probe - Kuafu-1 was officially launched! The 25th cycle of solar activity is intensifying, the sun is becoming more and more violent, and our detectors are about to find out!
As early as 2011, my country had proposed a plan to launch a solar space exploration satellite. In 2016, the relevant projects passed the acceptance review. At that time, the satellite was named Advanced Space-based Solar Observatory (ASO-S).
In July this year, the satellite engineering general ( National Space Science Center of Chinese Academy of Sciences ) solicited the names of ASO-S from the country, and collected more than 25,000 nominations in total, and about 1/3 of them were nominated as Kuafu . This name is undoubtedly selected and is therefore also known as Kuafu No. 1. Today, Kuafu-1 took off on the Long March 2 D carrier rocket at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center and started its solar exploration journey.
Why did it finally launch this year after 11 years of grand projects? The answer is very simple, because Chinese scientists plan according to the solar cycle.
We know that in addition to hydrogen fusion luminous and heat, the sun will also produce various violent solar activities, such as sunspots , flare , etc. The strength of solar activity is not fixed, but it follows a certain regularity. Generally, it takes 11 years as a cycle and will undergo a process of becoming extremely strong and then gradually weakening.
According to scientists' research, at the end of 2019, the 24th cycle of solar activity recorded by humans officially ended, and the 25th cycle followed. We are currently in this solar cycle. Around 2024-2025, the 25th cycle of the Sun is about to usher in a huge magnitude and then weaken again.
Since this year, the sun has become very active, and it can even be said to be a bit violent. For example, at the beginning of the year, more than 40 starlink satellites of Musk Space X were destroyed because of solar flare . After this, there were many solar activities such as flares, sunspots and coronal material ejections one after another.
Kuafu-1's design lifespan is 4 years, which means it will be retired as early as 2026, and at that time it has already passed the great solar cycle. It can be said that my country launched Kuafu One this year, which can perfectly cover the most active fragment of the 25th cycle of solar activity and obtain the most critical data. If its lifetime is further extended, it is expected to be observed that the process of solar activity from strong to weak.
Kuafu-1 has a mass of about 859 kg, and it is a medium-sized ranks among solar exploration satellites. It carries a total of 3 scientific loads, namely Lehman Alpha solar telescope , full-day vector magnetograph and hard X-ray imager .
The Sun is the closest star to Earth, which provides us with an excellent opportunity to study this type of celestial body. Even so, our understanding of the sun is still very limited. Take solar activity cycle as an example. It is 11 years. In fact, each cycle lasts differently. Astronomers need to end a period of time before they can realize that it has ended.
In addition to this, the activities of the sun are also very mysterious. The mission of Kuafu-1 is to observe and analyze the "one magnet and two storms" of the sun to understand the deep mechanism of solar activity.
The so-called one magnet and two storms refer to solar magnetic field , solar flares and coronal matter ejection.
Sun magnetic field is the root cause of solar activity. With the complex magnetic fracture and magnetic reconnection phenomenon, sunspots and other activities may occur. What exactly is the relationship between them still needs further research by astronomers.
Solar flare refers to a process of sudden and large-scale energy release in a local area on the surface of the sun. During the outbreak of a few minutes to dozens of minutes, the energy released may be equivalent to the power of tens of billions of hydrogen bombs !
Coronal mass ejection refers to plasma that is ejected from the surface of the sun. They are very fast, even reaching 1,000 kilometers per second, and extending to a distance outside the diameter of the sun. For example, an artistic picture of a coronal mass ejection taken by a foreign astronomer shared a few days before the naming, which reached an astonishing length of 16 billion kilometers!
If the solar activity is too intense, it is a threat to humans. In addition to destroying satellites, it may also damage electrical equipment on the ground. Therefore, astronomers have been paying attention to the sun's movements, understanding its strength and weakness, and preparing for the future. Humans need to be more careful whether it will have more terrifying activities, which will cause greater damage, such as the crisis in " Wandering Earth ". This is the mission of Kuafu No. 1.
After launching, Kuafu-1 will run in the morning and evening orbit about 720 kilometers from the surface of the earth. On this orbit, it will hardly be blocked by the shadow of the earth for a long time, thereby achieving almost uninterrupted observation of the sun and greatly improving observation efficiency.
Chief scientist of Advanced Space-based Solar Observatory Gan Weiqun introduced that Kuafu One is a well-deserved "big eater" in data acquisition. It can accumulate and return about 500GB of data every day, which is equivalent to sending tens of thousands of "high-definition large images" of the sun to the earth. With processing and processing, the data it produces every day is probably not even able to install a home computer. According to the 4 years of operation, it is equivalent to the storage volume of almost 1,500 home computers!
After these data are received and restored, they will be sent to the satellite data analysis center located at the Purple Mountain Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and professional scientific researchers will convert them into images and materials for scientific research.
In addition to Kuafu-1, my country also has a solar exploration satellite, that is, Xihe.
Xihehao is the full name of solar Hα spectral detection and dual superplatform scientific and technological test satellite . It was launched on October 14, 2021 and runs on an orbit 516 kilometers away from the surface. In August this year, Chinese scientists announced the results of the Xihe Sun Exploration for the first time, setting five international firsts, once again demonstrating my country's status as a space power. Before the launch of the Xihe, my country had only had a very small number of temporary space loads in solar research, and it relied heavily on foreign observation equipment. With the launch of the Xihe, our country finally broke the passive situation in this field. This time with Kuafu One, our country has a combination of two swords in solar detection. Their data can not only meet the research needs of Chinese scientists, but can even be shared with international astronomers.
According to the plan, our Kuafu No. 1 will share this data with international peers. In the future, my country is expected to carry out international training to guide foreign scientists how to download and use our software, and use this software to analyze the massive data obtained by Kuafu One, truly demonstrating our country's style as a great power.
#Telebrity Creation Challenge##Kuafu No. 1 successfully launched#
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