Trouble for Aditya-L1? NASA Parker Solar Probe gets caught in a dangerous CME whirlwind

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Solar activity has been rising significantly, with solar storms hitting the Earth left, right, and center with high frequency. But it is not just the Earth that is dealing with such impacts. Recently, NASA shared terrifying footage of the Parker Solar Probe flying through an intense coronal mass ejection (CME) cloud. This was the first time the NASA spacecraft had to endure such an ordeal, and it managed to come out unscathed from the incident and collected some important data along the way. However, such impacts are known to badly damage satellites and spacecraft alike, and with ISRO's Aditya-L1 mission spacecraft reaching its destination at Lagrange 1 point in four months to observe the Sun, there is a fear that it may have to suffer a similar fate.

According to a NASA blog post, “On Sept. 5, 2022, NASA's Parker Solar Probe soared gracefully through one of the most powerful coronal mass ejections (CMEs) ever recorded – not only an impressive feat of engineering, but a huge boon for the scientific community”. It further added that the interaction with the CME has uncovered some important data pertaining to space weather, and the results were published in The Astrophysical Journal. You can check the haunting footage of Parker Solar Probe passing through the CME here.

The Parker Solar Probe was launched in 2018 with the purpose of observing the outer corona of the Sun. This was done primarily for two reasons — first, to understand whether CME can interact with planetary dust in orbit around our star and carry it outwards, and to better predict space weather. The latter was considered an important task considering its impact on the planet, satellites, and humanity.

“CMEs are immense eruptions from the Sun's outer atmosphere,