NASA's historic Parker Solar Probe mission is the latest solar mission and it is able to revolutionize our understanding of the Sun, where changing conditions can propagate out into the solar system, affecting Earth and other planets. Parker Solar Probe travels through the Sun’s atmosphere, closer to the surface than any spacecraft before it, facing brutal heat and radiation conditions to provide humanity with the closest-ever observations of a star.
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| An artist's concept of NASA's Parker Solar Probe observing the Sun. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben |
Journey to the Sun
Parker Solar Probe uses Venus’ gravity during seven flybys over nearly seven years to gradually bring its orbit closer to the Sun in order to unlock the mysteries of the Sun's atmosphere. The spacecraft will fly through the Sun’s atmosphere as close as 3.8 million miles(6.12 million kilometers) to our star’s surface, well within the orbit of Mercury and more than seven times closer than any spacecraft has come before. Earth’s average distance from the Sun is 93 million miles(149 million kilometers).
Flying into the outermost part of the Sun's atmosphere, known as the corona, for the first time, Parker Solar Probe employs a combination of undisturbed measurements and imaging to revolutionize our understanding of the corona and expand our knowledge of the origin and evolution of the solar wind. It also makes critical contributions to our ability to forecast changes in Earth's space environment that affect life and technology on Earth.
- Nation: United States of America (USA)
- Spacecraft: Parker Solar Probe (Solar Probe Plus)
- Objective(s): Solar Orbit
- Spacecraft Mass: 685 kilograms at launch
- Mission Design and Management: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center / Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
- Launch Vehicle: Delta IV-Heavy with Upper Stage
- Launching Date and Time: Aug. 12, 2018/ 7:31 UTC
- Launch Site: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida
- Scientific Instruments
- Fields Experiment (FIELDS)
- Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun (IS☉IS )
- Wide Field Imager for Solar Probe (WISPR)
- Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons (SWEAP)
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| Parker Solar Probe began its thirteenth solar encounter on Sept. 1, 2022. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL |
Extreme Exploration
Parker Solar Probe performs its scientific investigations in a hazardous region of extreme heat and solar radiation of our star. The spacecraft 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.
To perform these unprecedented investigations, the spacecraft and instruments are protected from the Sun’s heat by a 4.5-inch-thick (11.43 cm) carbon-composite shield. At the closest approach to the Sun, the front of Parker Solar Probe's solar shield faces temperatures approaching 2,500 F (1,377 C). The spacecraft's payload will be near room temperature.
At the closest approach, Parker Solar Probe hurtles around the Sun at approximately 430,000 mph (700,000 kph). That's fast enough to get from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., in one second.
On the final three orbits, Parker Solar Probe flies to within 3.8 million miles of the Sun's surface more than seven times closer than the current record-holder for a close solar pass, the Helios 2 spacecraft, which came within 27 million miles in 1976, and about a tenth as close as Mercury, which is, on average, about 36 million miles from the Sun.
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| Parker Solar Probe Heat Shield |
The Science of the Sun
Teaming for Success
Sun is the source of every creature on Earth. Parker Solar Probe is part of NASA’s Living With a Star program to explore aspects of the Sun-Earth system that directly affect life and society. The Living With a Star flight program is managed by the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, manages the mission for NASA. APL designed, built, and operates the spacecraft.
Why do we study the Sun and the solar wind?
- The Sun is the closest star and the only star we can study. By studying this star we live with, we learn more about stars in the universe.
- The Sun is a source of light and heat for life on Earth. The more we know about it, the more we can understand how life on Earth developed.
- The Sun also affects Earth in less familiar ways. It is the source of the solar wind; a flow of ionized gases from the Sun that streams past Earth at speeds of more than 500 km per second (a million miles per hour).
- Disturbances in the solar wind shake Earth's magnetic field and pump energy into the radiation belts, part of a set of changes in near-Earth space known as space weather.
- Space weather can change the orbits of satellites, shorten their lifetimes, or interfere with onboard electronics. The more we learn about what causes space weather – and how to predict it – the more we can protect the satellites we depend on.
- The solar wind also fills up much of the solar system, dominating the space environment far past Earth. As we send spacecraft and astronauts further and further from home, we must understand this space environment just as early seafarers needed to understand the ocean.
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| NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has cleared the final procedures in the clean room before its move to the launch pad, where it will be integrated onto its launch vehicle, a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Ed Whitman |
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