However, dust grains pelt the spacecraft along its path, and the high-speed impacts create unique electrical signals, or plasma clouds. Taking advantage of Parker’s flight path – an orbit that swings it just millions of miles from the Sun, closer than any spacecraft in history – the scientists were able to get the best direct look yet at the dust grains shed from passing comets and asteroids.īuilt and operated by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, Parker Solar Probe does not carry a dedicated dust counter that would give it accurate readings on grain mass, composition, speed, and direction. The research builds on previous work by Szalay and several of his Parker Solar Probe mission colleagues, including the Geminids direct images captured by Karl Battams’ team, to assemble a picture of the structure and behavior of the large cloud of dust that swirls through the innermost solar system. Szalay was an author, with Wolf Cukier as the lead author, on the science paper recently published in The Planetary Science Journal. Most asteroids don’t do that,” said Jamey Szalay, a research scholar at Princeton University. “What’s really weird is that we know that Phaethon is an asteroid, but as it flies by the Sun, it seems to have some kind of temperature-driven activity. Asteroids like Phaethon are not typically affected by the Sun’s heat the way comets are, leaving scientists to wonder what caused the formation of Phaethon’s stream across the night sky. However, the Geminid stream seems to originate from an asteroid – a chunk of rock and metal – called 3200 Phaethon. Slowly, this repeated process fills the comet’s orbit with material that produces a meteor shower when Earth passes through the stream. When a comet travels close to the Sun, the ice evaporates and releases gas, dislodging small pieces of the comet and creating a trail of dust. Most meteor showers come from comets, which are made of ice and dust. Now, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe mission is providing new evidence that a violent, catastrophic event created the Geminids. Editor’s note: This blog post was updated to include more information about the paper published in The Planetary Science Journal.Įach winter, the Geminid meteors light up the sky as they race past Earth, producing one of the most intense meteor showers in the night sky.
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