NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Will Be Flying Close To The Sun

NASA’s upcoming sun-studying mission, which will come much closer to Earth’s star than any spacecraft in history, has been renamed the Parker Solar Probe, agency officials announced on the 31st May

The ambitious $1.5 billion Parker Solar Probe mission is scheduled to soar to solar orbit atop a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 31, 2018.

Over the course of the next seven years, the spacecraft will perform 24 close flybys of the sun, some of which will bring it within just 3.9 million miles (6.2 million kilometers) of the solar surface. That’s well inside the orbit of Mercury, and seven times closer than any other probe has ever gotten to the sun, NASA officials said.

The environment in this region is extreme, to say the least: During its closest encounters, the 10-foot-long (3 meters) Parker Solar Probe is expected to experience temperatures of up to 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit (1,370 degrees Celsius) and solar radiation intensities 475 times greater than we’re used to on Earth.

Mission controllers will therefore retract the Parker Solar Probe’s solar arrays as it approaches the sun and extend them as the spacecraft retreats, to keep panel power levels and temperatures from fluctuating too much. And the probe will be outfitted with a 7.5-foot-wide (2.3 m), 4.5-inch-thick (11.4 centimeters) heat shield made of advanced carbon-composite material, which will allow its four science instruments to operate at about room temperature, NASA officials said.

The Parker Solar Probe will perform a number of tasks with this science gear, such as measure the sun’s electric and magnetic fields, photograph solar structure and study the solar wind.