Parker Solar Probe
How this amazing mission will touch the Sun – and survive
Launched aboard a Delta IV Heavy rocket on 12 August 2018, NASA’S Parker Solar Probe will get more than seven-times closer to the Sun than any other spacecraft in history. The probe will make 24 orbits of the Sun on a journey that will almost literally touch its atmosphere and study our Solar System’s star in unprecedented detail.
The spacecraft has been sent on a long, spiralling journey that will slowly take it closer and closer to the Sun. Using seven flybys of Venus over seven years, the spacecraft – travelling at speeds of nearly 700,000 kilometres per hour – will be sent towards a final elliptical orbit with a closest approach of just six million kilometres from the surface of the Sun. Here, the spacecraft will experience temperatures of about 1,370 degrees Celsius and solar radiation 500-times that on Earth’s surface. It’s equipped with a thick solar shield made of carboncomposite to withstand these conditions, keeping its instruments operating at around room temperature.
If the mission is successful, the payoff could be huge. At these distances, the Parker Solar Probe will be able to study the Sun like never before. It will fly through the Sun’s corona – its outer atmosphere – to study how it transfers heat. It will also watch as solar wind speeds past the spacecraft, and try to image it in action with two telescopes. It will also try to work out how the highest-energy particles are fired from the Sun. It’s set to be an incredible mission, and if it all goes to plan it might just reveal some of the Sun’s biggest secrets.