Wednesday, August 8, 2018

NASA’s newest spacecraft will fly through the Sun’s scorching hot atmosphere

<em>An artistic rendering of the Parker Solar Probe in the Sun’s corona.</em>

In the wee hours of Saturday morning, a car-sized NASA spacecraft will embark on its journey to the center of our Solar System, where it will mingle with the scorching hot atmosphere of our Sun. The vehicle is the Parker Solar Probe, and it’s destined to get within 4 million miles of our parent star, which is closer than any other human-made artifact has reached before. From this vantage point, the probe is poised to solve mysteries about the Sun and its atmosphere that have plagued scientists for over half a century.

NASA has long wanted to send a vehicle to the Sun’s atmosphere, but such a mission has been considered impossible until the last few decades. This region of space, known as the corona, is filled with tiny, energetic...

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