ENDURING WICKED HEAT, NASA SET TO FLY INTO CORONA TO PROBE SUN’S ATMOSPHERE

The Parker probe is set to fly into the Sun's corona within 3.8 million miles ( 6.1 million km) from the solar surface.

Nasa is preparing to send a probe closer to the Sun than any other spacecraft has ventured, enduring wicked heat while zooming through the solar corona to study this outermost part of the stellar atmosphere that gives rise to the solar wind.

The Parker Solar Probe, a robotic spacecraft the size of a small car, is slated to launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida, with August 6 targeted as the launch date for the planned seven- year mission.

It is set to fly into the Sun’s corona within 3.8 million miles ( 6.1 million km) from the solar surface, seven times closer than any other spacecraft.

“To send a probe where you haven’t been before is ambitious. To send it into such brutal conditions is highly ambitious,” Nicola Fox, a project scientist from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, told a news conference on Friday.

The corona gives rise to the solar wind, a continuous flow of charged particles that permeates the solar system. Unpredictable solar winds cause disturbances in our planet's magnetic field. Nasa hopes the findings will enable scientists to forecast changes in Earth’s space environment. The project has a $ 1.5 billion price tag.

The probe is set to use seven Venus flybys over seven years to reduce its orbit around the Sun, using instruments designed to image the solar wind.