Free Republic

For the first time in history, a spacecraft has touched the Sun. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has now flown through the Sun’s upper atmosphere – the corona – and sampled particles and magnetic fields there. The new milestone marks one major step for Parker Solar Probe and one giant leap for solar science. Just as landing on the Moon allowed scientists to understand how it was formed, touching the very stuff the Sun is made of will help scientists uncover critical information about our closest star and its influence on the solar system. ... ...During the flyby, Parker Solar Probe...

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is providing important new insights into the inner working of the Sun and to achieve that it's breaking records left, right, and center. Last week it became the closest human-made object ever to the Sun and the fastest human-made object ever, breaking its own previous records. It was clocked zipping through the Sun's outer atmosphere at 532,000 kilometers (330,000 miles) per hour. To give you a sense of this achievement, let's put it in another context: Something made by humans just swung past the Sun at about 0.05 percent of the speed of light. The solar...

A similar process is playing out with the probe's speed: At the peak of its first two perihelions, the spacecraft traveled at about 213,200 mph (343,000 km/h), also breaking records, but future close approaches will see the Parker Solar Probe moving still faster. These close grazes are anxious times for scientists and engineers on the mission because the spacecraft is out of communication with Earth for several days before and after each perihelion. The radio silence is designed to let the spacecraft focus on keeping its instruments tucked safely behind the thick shield that protects them from the incredible heat...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – NASA said it is developing a car-sized satellite that by "no later than 2018" will plunge into the sun's outer atmosphere for an up-close study of its super-hot corona, solar wind and lethal radiation. The ambitious project, first recommended at the dawn of the space age in 1958, will help "characterize and forecast the radiation environment in which future space explorers will work and live," the US space agency said Saturday on its website. The sun probe is also part of President Barack Obama's long-term space policy announced in April calling for a "robotic exploration of the...