World News for Students of English

23-12-2021 07:00

In 2018, NASA’s spacecraft called Parker Solar Probe left for a mission to the Sun.

Last week, the probe flew through the Sun’s atmosphere, and it took samples of the Sun’s particles. Samples are small pieces of examples of things. It also explored the Sun’s magnetic field. This is where many things change on the Sun. The magnetic field can also affect us on Earth.

Scientists were very excited about this because the mission can help them understand more things about the Sun and about our solar system, too. All the things which they will learn will teach them more about other stars and about the universe.

At the start, the probe weighed 685 kilograms, and the project cost 1.5 billion dollars. The probe will get 6.9 million kilometers from the center of the Sun, and its highest speed will be at 690,000 kmph. It is the first spacecraft to fly into the Sun’s corona.

Difficult words: particle (a very small piece of something), solar system (the system of the Sun, the eight planets which go around it, and all their moons), corona (the outer atmosphere of a star, which people can see as a circle of light around it).

You can watch the original video in the Level 3 section.