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The Parker Solar Probe - A Mission to Touch the Sun -
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presented by Science@NASA.
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People around the world look up and see our Sun every day.
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But through a space telescope, it looks nothing like it does from down on the ground.
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The surface dances with arches of solar material that reach up into the solar atmosphere,
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an environment of charged particles and magnetic fields unlike anything we experience on Earth.
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In 2018, the Parker Solar Probe will launch from a Delta IV Heavy rocket and travel approximately 3 months to take its first swing by the Sun right through that atmosphere.
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Over seven years it will get ever closer, until ultimately it’s within 3.9 million miles (6.2 million km) of the Sun’s surface.
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That’s so close, that the previous record holder, the Helios-B Spacecraft, was seven times farther away.
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An important objective of the Parker Solar Probe is to learn more about the solar wind, an exotic stew of magnetic forces, plasma, and particles.
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It interacts with planetary magnetospheres and atmospheres, which over the eons may have contributed to a planet’s habitability.
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It blankets our spacecraft and astronauts traveling to the Moon and Mars.
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It affects space weather at and around Earth, and causes beautiful aurorae.
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The solar wind also travels at immense speeds, and scientists want to learn why.
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It leaves the Sun at a speed of up to 500 miles (800 km) per second, and engulfs all major planets in the solar system.
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What is the source of the wind?
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From a distance, it’s difficult to tell.
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Dr. Adam Szabo, the Parker mission scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center says,
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“We’ve been examining the solar wind for over 50 years.
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But the wind is processed by the time it reaches Earth.
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By studying it much closer to the Sun, the Parker Probe will be able to tell us such things as:
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What part of the Sun is providing the energy source for the wind’s particles, and how they can accelerate to such incredibly high speeds.”
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It’s like trying to understand how a car runs without looking at the motor.
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It’s important to get under the hood to determine the mechanisms driving the actual system.
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The Parker Solar Probe is the only NASA mission named after a living person.
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Dr. Eugene Parker, an astrophysicist, is credited with developing the theory behind the solar wind in the late 1950’s.
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When asked why he thinks so many people are drawn to this particular mission, Dr. Parker said,
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“I assume it’s the same reason that I got excited about it.
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This is a journey into Never Neverland you might say, where it’s too hot for any sensible spacecraft to function.
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But some very clever engineering and construction has succeeded in making what looks like a very workable mission.”
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Clever indeed.
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At its fastest speed, the Parker Solar Probe will orbit the sun at 430,000 miles per hour (716,000 km per hour),
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that’s fast enough to get from New York City to Tokyo in under a minute.
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It will absorb temperatures as high as 2,500° F (1,400° C).
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And soon, it will begin to transmit the data to help us better comprehend one of the least understood phenomena in our solar system, the solar wind.
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For more illuminating information about the Parker Solar Probe, visit science.nasa.gov