The Sun.
It’s the solar system’s engine,
and the only star in the sky that gets our attention…
every day.
But up close,
it’s unlike anything we can see from Earth.
It’s ferocious—
a writhing mass of nuclear chaos,
tangled magnetic lines,
and a constant wind with inconceivably high temperatures
and speeds close to a million miles an hour.
Over the years NASA has sent probes all over the solar system…
...but never to the Sun.
Check this out.
This is the Parker Solar Probe…
…and it’s going to be humanity’s first mission assigned to touch the Sun.
It will fly to within 4 million miles of the Sun’s surface
confronting brutal radiation
and temperatures that can reach 1,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Parker Solar Probe has been prepped
to fly right through that unforgiving atmosphere.
It's a rough journey.
Typically, if you want to head out into the solar system,
you merge with orbital traffic.
But if you want to head toward the center of the solar system,
you've got to run the other way…
and it takes a lot of energy.
once it arrives, the spacecraft has got to take the heat.
Bathed in radiation as it swoops in close,
Parker Solar Probe will use an advanced
carbon/carbon composite heat shield
o protect its delicate instruments.
And here’s a technical triumph:
the spacecraft’s thermal regulation system
will use just a single gallon of ordinary water
H 2 O
to collect and then dissipate heat…just like a car radiator.
It will fly into the corona,
the super hot region of gas and plasma surrounding the Sun.
There’s hardly a there there,
as high energy particles fly outward like streamers.
But – and this is another weird thing about the sun-
-the corona is hotter than the surface of the star itself.
We have a few good theories about this–
but we're really not sure why.
There's some process in the atmosphere that keeps heating it up
even as it gets further away from the core.
Parker Solar Probe is going to try and figure it out.
The corona also propels the solar wind out into space
at incredible speeds
way beyond the orbit of Pluto.
No one knows for sure what accelerates it so far so fast.
Parker Solar Probe is going to fly right through the origin of this wind,
right where it starts, to figure out how the whole system works
We can’t see those processes from Earth, or even from space.
Parker Solar Probe is our first direct encounter with a star.
Our Sun is the only star we can visit….
…which means this mission will gather
important information about how stars work…everywhere.
That’s information we can only get by going straight to the source.
Some journeys are harder than others.
Some destinations are further, higher, hotter.
But the only way to explore a new destination
is to actually make the journey.
Parker Solar Probe:
See you on The Sun.