![]() "Our plan before launch was to gather science data only when the spacecraft was within 0.25 astronomical units-about 23 million miles-of the sun's center. Less power degradation, better downlink rates, and temperatures below our prelaunch models all contributed to more flexible operations and made possible greatly enhanced returns," said Susan Ensor, the mission's deputy project manager from APL. "Parker Solar Probe has exceeded expectations, performing much better in space and resulting in even greater science return than we anticipated. Designed, built, and now operated at APL, Parker Solar Probe is fortified to survive the scorching environs near a star-this includes a heat shield (known as the thermal protection system), autonomous onboard "smarts" to keep that shield facing the sun, and a novel, efficient cooling system that uses circulating water. The "solar probe" mission was conceived in 1958, but it took 60 years to develop the technology to make it happen. He died on March 15, 2022, at age 94, but as Raouafi said at the time, "Gene Parker has been a transformative figure in heliophysics and space research and will continue to live with us through his pioneering research." The APL-built spacecraft carries revolutionary technology Parker witnessed the spacecraft's launch in person and delighted in the discoveries made in the mission's few years. Parker, eminent physicist who first predicted the solar wind, NASA announced in May 2017 that it would rename the Solar Probe Plus mission to Parker Solar Probe. Image credit: John Zich, University of Chicago Image caption: Solar astrophysicist Eugene Parker, whose 1958 paper published in Astrophysical Journal predicted the existence of the solar wind, is the namesake for the Parker Solar Probe Mission. Parker Solar Probe was the first NASA mission named for a living person "We have already made breakthrough discoveries in a region of the solar system that has never been explored by a spacecraft, and the best still might be yet to come."īelow are some interesting facts about NASA's historic mission to touch the sun. ![]() ![]() "Parker Solar Probe set out to revolutionize our knowledge of the sun in a way that no other mission had ever attempted," said Nour Raouafi, Parker Solar Probe project scientist from APL. Nearly four years after launch, the Parker Solar Probe mission, managed for NASA by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, has made unprecedented and significant inroads toward achieving its goals of tracing the flow of energy that heats the sun's outer atmosphere, shedding light on the sources of the solar wind, and exploring how solar energetic particles are transported and accelerated-enough so that NASA already considers the mission, only halfway through, a success.īut with its 12th close approach to the sun set to take place today, Parker Solar Probe continues to break records and capture first-of-its-kind measurements of the sun.
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