Probe to enter sun’s atmosphere

A NASA spacecraft will aim straight for the sun next year bearing the name of the astrophysicist who predicted the existence of solar wind nearly 60 years ago.

The space agency said the red-hot mission would be named after Eugene Parker, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago. It’s the first NASA spacecraft to be named after a researcher who is still alive.

The Parker Solar Probe, scheduled to launch mid-next year, will fly within four million miles of the sun’s surface — right into the solar atmosphere.

That will be considerably closer than any other spacecraft, and will subject it to brutal heat and radiation like no other man-made structure before. The materials weren’t available until now to undertake such a mission.

The purpose is to study the sun’s outer atmosphere and better understand how stars like ours work.

NASA spacecraft have travelled inside the orbit of Mercury, the innermost planet. “But until you actually go there and touch the sun, you really can’t answer these questions,” like why is the corona — the outer plasma- loaded atmosphere — hotter than the actual surface of the sun, said mission project scientist Nicola Fox, of Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory.

Parker Solar Probe will zip in and out of a region where the mercury hits 1371C.

“Solar Probe is going to be the hottest, fastest mission. I like to call it the coolest, hottest mission under the sun,” Dr Fox said.