NASA is to set to launch the world’s first mission to the sun next year that will answer questions about solar physics that have puzzled scientists for decades, including finding out why the sun’s corona is so much hotter than its surface.
The Parker Solar Probe is named after pioneering astrophysicist Eugene Parker, who predicted the existence of the solar wind nearly 60 years ago; the first time NASA has named a spacecraft for a living individual.
The spacecraft will travel through the sun’s atmosphere, seven times closer to the surface than any spacecraft before it, facing intense heat and radiation conditions to provide humanity with the closet-ever observations of a star.
It will fly close enough to the sun to watch the solar wind speed up from subsonic to supersonic, and it will fly through the birthplace of the highest-energy solar particles. The spacecraft and instruments will be protected from the sun’s heat by a 4.5 inch thick carbon-composite shield, which will withstand temperatures outside the spacecraft that reach nearly 1,377 degree Celsius.
The spacecraft will be launched in July 2018 from NASA’s Kennedy Centre in Florida.
Picture Credit : Google
