NASA’s solar probe has officially broken 1972 the record set by the Helios 2 spacecraft, to become the closest space probe to approach the Sun. The technology broke the previous record of 26.55 million miles from the Sun on Tuesday, October 29. US space agency NASA boasted in a statement the Parker Solar Probe will continue to break even more records as it makes numerous approaches to the star. NASA launched the exploration probe to the Sun less than 80 days ago, on August 12, on a first of its kind mission to study the Sun’s corona.

During its mission, the probe will dip in and out of orbit around the Sun reaching within 3.83 million miles of its scorching surface. Andy Driesman, Parker project manager, said: “It’s been just 78 days since Parker Solar Probe launched, and we’ve now come closer to our star than any other spacecraft in history. “It’s a proud moment for the team, though we remain focused on our first solar encounter, which begins on October 31.” Not content with just being the closest ever probe to the Sun, NASA expected the spacecraft to break a speed record on Tuesday night as well.

The space agency said the probe was well on its way to break the 153,454 mph milestone set by the Helios 2 in April 1976.

On October 31, the day of Halloween, NASA will begin its first so-called solar encounter with the burning star. After that, the space probe will gradually creep closer to the Sun’s surface until it reaches its closest possible distance on November 5. NASA said: “The spacecraft will face brutal heat and radiation conditions while providing humanity with unprecedentedly close-up observations of a star and helping us understand phenomena that have puzzled scientists for decades.

“These observations will add key knowledge to NASA’s efforts to understand the Sun, where changing conditions can propagate out into the solar system, affecting Earth and other worlds.” The NASA Parker Solar Probe blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, US, this summer. NASA and the Applied Physics Laboratory at John Hopkins University in Laurel, Maryland are operating the mission. The spacecraft was designed to study energised particle ejections and solar winds escaping the Sun’s outer corona. </s> NASA’s Parker Solar Probe reaches closest to the Sun than any spacecraft ever (video)

The $1.5 billion mission will take humanity closer to the Sun than ever before

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has clinched the record for closest approach to the Sun by a man-made object, the space agency confirmed Monday.

Scientists calculated that the spacecraft surpassed the current record of 26.55 million miles from the Sun’s surface at about 1:04 p.m. EDT Monday. The previous record was set in April 1976 by the Helios 2 spacecraft.

“It’s been just 78 days since Parker Solar Probe launched, and we’ve now come closer to our star than any other spacecraft in history,” said Parker Solar Probe Project Manager Andy Driesman, of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, in a statement.

Parker blasted off on its odyssey atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket in the early hours of Aug. 12, 2018.

The $1.5 billion mission will take humanity closer to the Sun than ever before. Parker will be the first spacecraft to fly through the Sun’s corona, the outermost part of the star’s atmosphere. It is expected to arrive at the Sun in November. </s> Miami, Aug 12 (IANS) NASA on Sunday successfully launched the Parker Solar Probe, the US space agency's historic small car-size probe to "touch the Sun," from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.



"3-2-1... and we have liftoff of Parker #SolarProbe atop @ULAlaunch's #DeltaIV Heavy rocket," the US-based space agency tweeted.



The launch was initially planned for Saturday morning.



The probe is named after Eugene Parker, a solar physicist, who in 1958 first predicted the existence of the solar wind, a stream of charged particles and magnetic fields that flow continuously from the sun. 



Nestled atop a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy -- one of the world's most powerful rockets -- with a third stage added, Parker Solar Probe will blasted off toward the sun with a whopping 55 times more energy than was required to reach Mars. 



Weighing just 635 kgs, it is a relatively light spacecraft, Andy Driesman, project manager for the mission at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in the US, said in an earlier statement.



Zooming through space in a highly elliptical orbit, the Parker Solar Probe will reach speeds of up to 700,000 kms per hour, setting the record for the fastest spacecraft in history. 



During its nominal mission lifetime of just under seven years, the Parker Solar Probe will complete 24 orbits of the Sun -- reaching within 3.8 million miles of the Sun's surface at the closest approach.



In an orbit this close to the Sun, the real challenge is to keep the spacecraft from burning up.



--IANS



vc/ksk/sed </s> A NASA spacecraft zoomed toward the sun Sunday on an unprecedented quest to get closer to our star than anything ever sent before.

As soon as this fall, the Parker Solar Probe will fly straight through the wispy edges of the sun’s corona, or outer atmosphere, that was visible during last August’s total solar eclipse. It eventually will get within 3.8 million (6 million kilometres) of the surface in the years ahead, staying comfortably cool despite the extreme heat and radiation, and allowing scientists to vicariously explore the sun in a way never before possible.

No wonder scientists consider it the coolest, hottest mission under the sun, and what better day to launch to the sun than Sunday as NASA noted.

“We’re in for some learning over the next several years,” said Eugene Parker, the 91-year-old astrophysicist for whom the spacecraft is named.

Protected by a revolutionary new carbon heat shield and other high-tech wonders, the spacecraft will zip past Venus in October. That will set up the first solar encounter in November.

Altogether, the Parker probe will make 24 close approaches to the sun on the seven-year, $1.5 billion undertaking.

READ MORE: NASA is gearing up to ‘touch the sun’ with a robotic spacecraft the size of a small car

For the second straight day, thousands of spectators jammed the launch site in the middle of the night as well as surrounding towns, including Parker and his family. He proposed the existence of solar wind – a steady, supersonic stream of particles blasting off the sun – 60 years ago.

It was the first time NASA named a spacecraft after someone still alive, and Parker wasn’t about to let it take off without him. Saturday morning’s launch attempt was foiled by last-minute technical trouble. But Sunday gave way to complete success.

READ MORE: NASA’s rover finds more evidence that life on Mars may be possible

The Delta IV Heavy rocket thundered into the pre-dawn darkness, thrilling onlookers for miles around as it climbed through a clear, star-studded sky. NASA needed the mighty 23-story rocket, plus a third stage, to get the diminutive Parker probe – the size of a small car and well under a ton – racing toward the sun.

From Earth, it is 93 million miles (150 million kilometres) to the sun, and the Parker probe will be within 4 per cent of that distance at its closest. That will be seven times closer than previous spacecraft.

WATCH: A NASA space probe is set to launch with the aim of giving us the closest look ever at the sun. As Eric Sorensen reports, the journey the Parker Solar Space probe will undertake is a technical feat to match the mysteries it aims to solve.

It was the first rocket launch ever witnessed by Parker, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago. He came away impressed, saying it was like looking at the Taj Mahal for years in photos and then beholding “the real thing” in India.

NASA’s science mission chief, Thomas Zurbuchen, was thrilled not only with the launch, but Parker’s presence.

“I’m in awe,” Zurbuchen said. “What a milestone. Also what’s so cool is hanging out with Parker during all this and seeing his emotion, too.”

READ MORE: Quebec scientists preparing medical database for astronauts heading to Mars

Parker, the probe, will start shattering records this fall. On its very first brush with the sun, it will come within 15.5 million miles (25 million kilometres), easily beating the current record of 27 million miles (43 million kilometres) set by NASA’s Helios 2 spacecraft in 1976. Zurbuchen expects the data from even this early stage to yield top science papers.

By the time Parker gets to its 22nd, 23rd and 24th orbits of the sun in 2024 and 2025, it will be even deeper into the corona and travelling at a record-breaking 430,000 mph (690,000 kilometres per hour).

Nothing from Planet Earth has ever hit that kind of speed.

Even Fox has difficulty comprehending the mission’s derring-do.

Zurbuchen considers the sun the most important star in our universe – it’s ours, after all – and so this is one of NASA’s big-time strategic missions. By better understanding the sun’s life-giving and sometimes violent nature, Earthlings can better protect satellites and astronauts in orbit, and power grids on the ground, he noted. In today’s tech-dependent society, everyone stands to benefit.

With this first-of-its-kind stellar mission, scientists hope to unlock the many mysteries of the sun, a commonplace yellow dwarf star around 4.5 billion years old. Among the puzzlers: Why is the corona hundreds of times hotter than the surface of the sun and why is the sun’s atmosphere continually expanding and accelerating, as Parker accurately predicted in 1958?

“The only way we can do that is to finally go up and touch the sun,” Fox said.

The spacecraft’s heat shield will serve as an umbrella, shading the science instruments during the close, critical solar junctures. Sensors on the spacecraft will make certain the heat shield faces the sun at the right times. If there’s any tilting, the spacecraft will correct itself so nothing gets fried. With a communication lag time of 16 minutes, the spacecraft must fend for itself at the sun. The Johns Hopkins flight controllers in Laurel, Maryland, will be too far away to help.

READ MORE: Jenni Sidey-Gibbons is flying high, diving deep and learning Russian. Here’s what astronaut training is really like

A mission to get close up and personal with our star has been on NASA’s books since 1958. The trick was making the spacecraft small, compact and light enough to travel at incredible speeds, while surviving the sun’s punishing environment and the extreme change in temperature when the spacecraft is out near Venus.

“We’ve had to wait so long for our technology to catch up with our dreams,” Fox said. “It’s incredible to be standing here today.”

More than 1 million names are aboard the spacecraft, submitted last spring by space enthusiasts, as well as photos of Parker, the man, and a copy of his 1958 landmark paper on solar wind.

“I’ll bet you 10 bucks it works,” Parker said. </s> Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The Parker Solar Probe spacecraft takes off on its mission to the Sun

US space agency Nasa has launched its mission to send a satellite closer to the Sun than any before.

The Parker Solar Probe rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The probe is set to become the fastest-moving manmade object in history. Its data promises to crack longstanding mysteries about the Sun's behaviour.

It is the first space craft to be named after a living person - astrophysicist Eugene Parker, 91, who first described solar wind in 1958.

"Wow, here we go! We're in for some learning over the next several years," he said after watching the lift-off from the scene. The University of Chicago professor said he had been biting his nails in anticipation.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Astrophysicist Dr Eugene Parker with a model of the Parker Solar Probe that he inspired

The Delta-IV Heavy rocket - which was carrying the probe - launched at 03:31 local time (07:31 GMT).

It came after a failed attempt the previous day, when a last-minute alarm caused the agency to miss its 65-minute window.

Just under an hour after the launch, Nasa confirmed that the spacecraft had successfully separated and the probe had been released into space.

What will the probe do?

The probe aims to dip directly into our star's outer atmosphere, or corona.

It will zip past Venus in six weeks and make a first rendezvous with the Sun a further six weeks after that.

Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Parker Solar Probe: How Nasa is trying to 'touch' the Sun

Over the course of seven years, Parker will make 24 loops around our star to study the physics of the corona, the place where much of the important activity that affects the Earth seems to originate.

The probe will dip inside this tenuous atmosphere, sampling conditions, and getting to just 6.16 million km (3.83 million miles) from the Sun's broiling "surface".

"I realise that might not sound that close, but imagine the Sun and the Earth were a metre apart. Parker Solar Probe would be just 4cm away from the Sun," explained Dr Nicky Fox, the UK-born project scientist who is affiliated to the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

"It will also be the fastest man-made object ever, travelling at speeds of up to 430,000mph [690,000km/h] - New York to Tokyo in under a minute!" she told BBC News. </s> Here Comes the Sun

The Parker Solar Probe, humanity's first-ever mission into the Sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, has become the closest human-made object to ever approach our star.

The space agency said in a statement on Monday that Parker passed the current record of 26.55 million miles (42.73 million km) from the Sun's surface. Yet, the spacecraft is gradually shrinking its orbit around the sun, with the final objective being 3.83 million miles (6.16 million km) from the surface. The previous record was set by the German-American Helios 2 probe in April 1976.

"It's been just 78 days since Parker Solar Probe launched, and we've now come closer to our star than any other spacecraft in history," said Project Manager Andy Driesman.

It also emerged on Monday that the mission set the speed record for spacecraft traveling relative to the Sun, surpassing 153,454 mph (shy of 247,000 km/h) and breaking the record set by Helios 2 back in 1976.

The Parker Solar Probe blasted off from Cape Canaveral air force station in Florida on August 13.

During its 7-year mission, the probe will complete 24 orbits of the Sun, coming within 3.8 million miles of its surface, and dip into the corona, the plasmic aura that is even hotter than the surface.

The craft will seek to unlock some of mysteries about our Sun's behavior by sampling the corona, the birthplace of solar flares and other violent events, and get a better understanding of how solar winds are formed.

NASA expects to get the first batch of data in December, but the spacecraft has another mission: it holds a memory card with the names of over 1.1 million people who signed up to "travel" to the Sun. The probe is equipped with a carbon heat shield to prevent it from roasting. </s> NASA on Sunday launched a probe that will head closer to the Sun than any other spacecraft before it. The Parker Solar Probe will endure wicked heat while zooming through the solar corona to study this outermost part of the stellar atmosphere that gives rise to the solar wind.

The Probe, a robotic spacecraft the size of a small car, was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida, for its planned seven-year mission. It is set to fly into the Sun’s corona within 3.8 million miles or 6.1 million km from the solar surface, seven times closer than any other spacecraft.

The previous closest pass to the Sun was by a probe called Helios 2, which in 1976 came within 27 million miles or 43 million km. The average distance from the Sun for Earth is 93 million miles or 150 million km.

The corona gives rise to the solar wind, a continuous flow of charged particles that permeates the solar system.

Unpredictable solar winds cause disturbances in our planet’s magnetic field and can play havoc with communications technology on Earth. NASA hopes the findings will enable scientists to forecast changes in Earth’s space environment.

The project, with a $1.5 billion price tag, is the first major mission under NASA’s Living With a Star programme.

The probe is set to use seven Venus flybys over nearly seven years to steadily reduce its orbit around the Sun, using instruments designed to image the solar wind and study electric and magnetic fields, coronal plasma and energetic particles.

NASA aims to collect data about the inner workings of the highly magnetized corona. The probe, named after American solar astrophysicist Eugene Newman Parker, will have to survive difficult heat and radiation conditions.

It has been outfitted with a heat shield designed to keep its instruments at a tolerable 85 degrees Fahrenheit or 29 degrees Celsius even as the spacecraft faces temperatures reaching nearly 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit or 1,370 degrees Celsius at its closest pass. </s> Some scientists scoffed at University of Chicago physicist Eugene Parker’s 1958 paper proposing the existence of a solar wind — a constant stream of particles flowing out from the sun that permeates the entire solar system.

Spacecraft quickly proved him right, and 60 years later, Parker looked on early Sunday as a NASA probe bearing his name rocketed from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on a $1.5 billion mission to “touch” the sun and solve some of its persisting mysteries.

“All I have to say is, wow, here we go,” said Parker, 91, after the launch he watched from Kennedy Space Center. “We’re in for some learning over the next several years.”

On its second attempt, the Parker Solar Probe — NASA’s first mission named for a living person — rumbled from the Space Coast at 3:31 a.m. Sunday atop one of the most powerful American rockets, United Launch Alliance’s 233-foot Delta IV Heavy.

A trio of first-stage boosters fired hydrogen-fueled engines to light up the night sky above Launch Complex 37, unleashing 2.1 million pounds of thrust to begin the probe’s seven-year mission.

A second rocket stage fired and then an extra third stage provided the final kick needed to hurtle the relatively small, 1,400-pound spacecraft out of Earth’s orbit and toward the sun, releasing it 43 minutes after liftoff.

"It went off like clockwork," said Omar Baez, the mission's NASA launch manager, said of Sunday's countdown and launch. "The energy of that (launch) vehicle, the immense size, and when you realize how tiny the Parker Solar Probe satellite is, and you have this big vehicle around it, it’s just mind boggling."

In six weeks, the probe will use the first of seven flybys of Venus to perform the equivalent of a handbrake turn to fine-tune its trajectory. That will set up the first of 24 petal-shaped orbits around Earth's nearest star within a few months.

The first pass 15 million miles from the sun’s surface will already be the closest by any spacecraft, a distance that will close to within 3.8 million miles by the closest approaches through the sun’s super-heated outer atmosphere, or corona.

“While we have many missions dedicated to studying the sun from afar, we have never, ever had a mission to get this up close and personal,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, head of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate.

Parker’s equations predicted the solar wind, but six decades later, scientists can’t precisely explain the physics driving its acceleration or the corona’s extreme heating.

The corona, visible from Earth during last year’s total solar eclipse as a fiery glow around the sun with wispy bands stretching outward, is far hotter than the roiling surface below it.

“We’re used to the idea that if I am standing next to a campfire, and I walk away from it, it gets cooler,” said Alex Young, a solar scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. “But this is not what happens on the sun. As we go from the surface of the sun, which is 10,000 degrees, and quickly move up into corona, we find ourselves quickly at millions of degrees.”

It’s also unknown what causes the solar wind to accelerate from a steady breeze to a supersonic flow, or what sparks violent solar storms that eject blobs of material at millions of miles per hour.

Theories have proposed waves and nanoflares, or a combination of them.

Pinning down those processes will advance understanding of how all stars work. It could also improve predictions of so-called space weather, which can damage satellites, endanger astronauts and disrupt power grids on Earth.

“It’s of fundamental importance for us to be able to predict space weather much like we predict weather here on Earth,” said Young.

The Parker Solar Probe is equipped with four instrument suites to measure plasma, magnetic and electrical fields and energetic particles, and to image the regions the spacecraft is about to fly through.

The probe will charge into the sun’s corona behind what engineers have nicknamed its “Eight-Foot Frisbee” — a heat shield measuring eight feet across and just four-and-a-half inches thick.

Consisting of two layers of carbon-carbon composite sandwiched around carbon foam, the front of the shield, coated with white ceramic paint, will withstand temperatures up to 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit. In the Frisbee’s shadow, the spacecraft’s body and most of its instruments will stay a comfortable 85 degrees.

How can the spacecraft survive in a region reaching millions of degrees?

“The corona is very tenuous plasma,” said Nicola Fox, the mission’s project scientist from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Baltimore. “If you think of putting your oven on and you set it at 400 degrees, and you can put your hand inside your oven and you won’t get burned unless you actually touch a surface. And it really is the same.”

But the Parker Solar Probe features multiple technologies to cope with the heat threat. It's the first spacecraft to actively cool solar array wings that are critical to generating power, and onboard sensors will react if any sensitive areas are exposed to excessive heat, commanding the probe to adjust its position.

Such automation is needed because sunlight takes eight minutes to reach Earth 93 million miles away. There’s not enough time for engineers to receive signals, process them and return instructions before a problem could prove catastrophic.

“She has to be able to look after herself,” Fox said of the probe.

By the time of its closest approach to the sun’s surface, the Parker Solar Probe will be traveling at 430,000 mph, making it the fastest human-made object ever.

Mission scientists credited Eugene Parker with being the father of their field, heliophysics, calling him a superstar whose work underpins all of the mission’s objectives.

Parker said he’s particularly interested in learning more about the heating that occurs during explosive solar flares and storms.

“I suspect it’s going to be complicated, and I suspect some of us will argue with each other as to exactly what’s going on,” he said before the launch. “But you’ve got data to work with, and you have a chance of getting it straightened out.”

Sunday's flight of his namesake mission was the first rocket launch Parker had seen in person, an experience he likened to seeing the Taj Mahal up close rather than in pictures or on TV.

"Somehow when you’re looking at the real thing, it’s quite impressive," he told NASA TV.

Sunday’s mission was United Launch Alliance’s sixth of the year, and the third countdown in less than six days on the Eastern Range, starting with SpaceX’s early Aug. 7 launch of an Indonesian satellite.

SpaceX is expected to shoot for its 16th launch of the year in the next two weeks, with a Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Canadian communications satellite. </s> NASA’s historic Parker Solar Probe -- enroute to the Sun to unravel its mysteries -- has become the closest spacecraft to it.

The spacecraft passed the current record of 26.55 million miles from the Sun’s surface on October 29, as calculated by the Parker Solar Probe team, NASA said in a statement on Monday.

The previous record for closest solar approach was set by the German-American Helios 2 spacecraft in April 1976.

As the Parker Solar Probe mission progresses, the spacecraft will repeatedly break its own records, with a final close approach of 3.83 million miles from the Sun’s surface expected in 2024.

“It’s been just 78 days since Parker Solar Probe launched, and we’ve now come closer to our star than any other spacecraft in history,” said Project Manager Andy Driesman from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.

“It’s a proud moment for the team, though we remain focused on our first solar encounter, which begins on October 31,” Driesman added.

The Parker Solar Probe team periodically measures the spacecraft’s precise speed and position using NASA’s Deep Space Network or DSN.

Parker Solar Probe will begin its first solar encounter on October 31, continuing to fly closer and closer to the Sun’s surface until it reaches its first perihelion -- the point closest to the Sun -- on November 5.

“The spacecraft will face brutal heat and radiation conditions while providing humanity with unprecedentedly close-up observations of a star and helping us understand phenomena that have puzzled scientists for decades,” said NASA.

Earlier this month, the probe successfully completed its first fly-by of Venus at a distance of about 1,500 miles.

Throughout its mission, the probe will make six more Venus gravity assist and 24 total passes by the Sun.
NASA launches the Parker Solar Probe, an unpiloted spacecraft designed to study the sun.