Lift off! Nasa’s Parker Solar Probe sets off on quest to ‘touch the Sun’
A NASA spacecraft is heading towards the Sun on an unprecedented quest to get closer to our star than anything ever sent before.
This autumn, the Parker Solar Probe will fly straight through the wispy edges of the Sun’s corona, or outer atmosphere, which was visible during last August’s total solar eclipse.
It will eventually “touch the Sun”, reaching within 3.8 million miles of the surface in the years ahead, staying cool despite the extreme heat and radiation, and allowing scientists to vicariously explore the Sun in a way never before possible.
“All I can say is, ‘Wow, here we go’. We’re in for some learning over the next several years,” said Eugene Parker, the 91-year-old astrophysicist after whom the spacecraft is named.
Protected by a revolutionary new carbon heat shield and other hightech innovations, the spacecraft will fly past Venus in October.
That will set up the solar encounter for November.
Altogether, the Parker probe will make 24 close approaches to the Sun in the course of its seven-year mission.
For the second straight day, thousands of spectators attended the launch area, at Cape Canaveral, Florida, in the middle of the night – including Mr Parker and his family.
Mr Parker made a huge contribution to scientific knowledge when he proposed the existence of solar wind – a steady, supersonic stream of particles blasting off the Sun – 60 years ago. It was the first time Nasa named a spacecraft after someone still living.
Saturday morning’s launch attempt was foiled by last-minute technical trouble but, yesterday, the glitches gave way to complete success.
The Delta IV Heavy rocket thundered into the pre-dawn darkness, thrilling onlookers for miles around as it climbed through a clear, star-studded sky.
Nasa needed the mighty 23-story rocket, plus a third stage, to get the diminutive Parker probe – the size of a small car and weighing well under a ton – out of the Earth’s atmosphere.
From Earth, it is 93 million miles to the Sun, and the Parker probe will be within just 4 per cent of that distance at its closest – seven times closer than previous spacecraft.
It was the first rocket launch ever witnessed by Mr Parker, Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago. He came away impressed, saying it was like looking at the Taj Mahal for years in photos and then beholding “the real thing” in India.
“I really have to turn from biting my nails in getting it launched, to thinking about all the interesting things which I don’t know yet and which will be made clear, I assume, over the next five or six or seven years,” Mr Parker said on Nasa TV.
Nasa’s science mission chief, Thomas Zurbuchen, was thrilled not only with the launch, but Mr Parker’s presence.
“I’m in awe,” Mr Zurbuchen said. “What a milestone. Also what’s so cool is hanging out with Parker during all this and seeing his emotion, too.”