NASA‘s Parker Solar Probe spacecraft, which was launched in August of 2018 in a bid to study the sun more closely than ever before, recently began sending its first data back to Earth, offering valuable information to mankind about our solar system’s only star.
There are four Greek scientists on the teams which are responsible for carrying out this important scientific quest, and their contributions are extremely valuable to this latest NASA project.
The ”Touch the Sun” mission’s studies will assist scientists to better predict space “weather” as well as to understand the behavior of other stars in the universe, apart from our sun.
The Greek scientists who have been chosen to take part in the mission are in two of the four study groups which are part of this NASA project.
Academic-space scientist Stamatis Krimizis, and researcher Olga Malandraki of the Institute of Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications & Remote Astronomy of the National Observatory of Athens are two of the Greek citizens responsible for the Parker Solar Probe mission.
The others are Astrophysicist Angelos Vourlidas from Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory and Athanasios Couloumbakos, from the Institute of Research, Astrophysics and Planetology in Toulouse, France.
Their work in NASA’s multinational teams will aid our broader understanding of a series of various aspects of the sun’s functionalities and their importance to human life on Earth.
Source: usa.greekreporter.com