• Question: what's the closest distance we could ever get to the sun???

    Asked by Elodie #SpaceInvasion to Anne, Beth, COLFlight, Jon on 15 Oct 2015.
    • Photo: Columbus Flight Directors

      Columbus Flight Directors answered on 15 Oct 2015:

      Sergio:
      Hi Elodie!

      It’s difficult to say what will be “ever” be able to achieve, humanity has such a great ingenuity that it always solved the big problems that it faced in the past. So who knows what will be able to do in the far future? 🙂

      Talking about the past, the closest we ever got to the Sun was about 0.3 astronomical units, which is about 27 million miles. That is one third of the distance of the Earth from the Sun.

      As technology evolves, if we are able to produce materials able to sustain higher temperatures, we will probably be able to get closer. But remember that the closer you get, the more radiations you get. These would be quite bad for astronauts..

    • Photo: Beth Healey

      Beth Healey answered on 15 Oct 2015:

      Hi Elodie#SpaceInvasion!!

      The main thing to consider would be the radiation. It’s not really in my field so I had a look online and this was the best calculation I could find:

      https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/35ww3j/how_close_can_you_get_to_the_sun_before_you_burn/cr8zj18

      As technology advances we may be able to reduce this 🙂

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