NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Captures Photo of Venus During Close Flyby Written 26 February 2021
Parker Solar Probe captures image of Venus with its Wide-field Imager while flying past Venus in July 2020. | Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Naval Research Laboratory/Guillermo Stenborg and Brendan Gallagher
SPACE reports that the NASA Parker Solar Probe completed its fourth swing past Venus on February 20. The probe is on a mission to fly closer to the sun than any previous spacecraft, but needs to “whiz past Venus a total of seven times, with each pass pulling the spacecraft closer to the sun.” The Parker Solar Probe is equipped with an instrument called the Wide-field Imager for Parker Solar Probe, which is “designed to capture distant, visible-light images of phenomena surrounding the sun, like the solar wind that constantly shoots charged particles out from the sun across the solar system or the coronal mass ejections that vomit blobs of matter into space, according to NASA.” The image it captured provided a “fascinating view” of Venus.
Full Story (SPACE)