BTW, "touches the sun" means 6.5 million miles away. To try to put that in perspective:
"One astronomical unit (AU) represents the mean distance between the Earth and our sun. An AU is approximately 93 million miles (150 million km). It's approximately 8 light-minutes." [0]
The probe at its closest orbit will be orbiting at very approximately 1/14 of an AU. And (again very approximately) 34 light-seconds from the Sun.
I can't stand it when popular articles quote spacecraft speeds in mph or km/h. It's supposed to be more relatable to laypeople, obviously, but it's not.
What does hundreds of thousands of mph mean to me? Nothing; there's nothing in ordinary life to compare to. Miles (or km) per second, now that does create a picture. I also can vaguely recall the order of magnitude of earth orbital speed in mi/s, as well as the speed of light.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 16.6 ms ] threadBTW, "touches the sun" means 6.5 million miles away. To try to put that in perspective:
"One astronomical unit (AU) represents the mean distance between the Earth and our sun. An AU is approximately 93 million miles (150 million km). It's approximately 8 light-minutes." [0]
The probe at its closest orbit will be orbiting at very approximately 1/14 of an AU. And (again very approximately) 34 light-seconds from the Sun.
0 - https://earthsky.org/space/what-is-the-astronomical-unit
1% of the speed of light would be 10.8 million km/hr
What does hundreds of thousands of mph mean to me? Nothing; there's nothing in ordinary life to compare to. Miles (or km) per second, now that does create a picture. I also can vaguely recall the order of magnitude of earth orbital speed in mi/s, as well as the speed of light.