NASA’s Parker space probe, whose mission is to study the sun, has also made close trips to the planets, including: Venus.
On this planet, the probe has discovered something strange: When it landed just 833 kilometers above the surface of Venus, the probe instruments recordedLow frequency normal radio signalThis is a telltale sign that Parker has passed through the ionosphere, a layer of the planet’s upper atmosphere, NASA explained.
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Like Venus, Venus contains an electrically charged gas layer at the top edge of its atmosphere, called the ionosphere, astronomer Glenn Collinson explained. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center To La Vanguardia.
He explained, “This sea of charged gases, or plasma, naturally emits radio waves that can be detected by tools such as FIELDS, one of Parker’s instruments, which is named after the electric and magnetic fields that they measure in the sun’s atmosphere.”
(Also: they publish the updated statistics of the all-solar “neighborhood”)
It was the first time that an instrument had been able to record direct in situ measurements of Venus’ upper atmosphere in nearly three decades. This provides a better understanding of how Venus changes in response to the periodic changes in the sun.
In other words, Parker thus asserts that the planet’s ionosphere decreases dramatically as the sun becomes less energetic.
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