Parker Solar Probe

About:

• Mission objectives: The probe will investigate two key questions about solar physics:
  • How the solar wind is accelerated i.e. how do they attain speeds of as much as 1.8 million mph?
    
    
  • Why the sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, is so much hotter than the solar surface?
    
    
  
  
  
• Journey:
  • The probe will fly through the Sun’s atmosphere and will come as close as 3.8 million miles to the star’s surface. It is expected to make 24 loops of the Sun over seven years.
    
    
  • In order to reach an orbit around the sun, it will take seven flybys of Venus that will help the probe in reducing its orbital distance to the sun.
    
    
  • The mission is scheduled to end in 2025. The first data download from the Parker Solar Probe is expected in early December 2018 after the probe reaches its first close approach of the sun in November.
    
    
  
  
  
• Significant firsts:
  • The Parker Solar Probe’s departure promises to set a number of records, including speediest spacecraft, highest velocity while leaving Earth and closest solar approach (within the corona of a star).
    
    
  • So far, the Helios 2 spacecraft has made the closest approach, which flew within 27 million miles in 1976.
    
    
  
  
  
• The mission is the first to be named after a living scientist, Eugene N Parker, who was the first scientist to describe solar wind in 1958.