page_title: Parker Solar Probe
section_title: Spacecraft
hierarchical_section_title: Parker Solar Probe / Spacecraft
caption_attribution_description: English: The solar array cooling system for the Parker Solar Probe spacecraft—one element of which is the large, square black radiator visible at center, one of two that will be installed—is shown undergoing thermal testing at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland in late February
context_page_description: The Parker Solar Probe is a NASA robotic spacecraft launched in 2018 with the mission of making observations of the outer corona of the Sun. It will approach to within 9.86 solar radii from the center of the Sun, and by 2025 will travel, at closest approach, as fast as 690,000 km/h, or 0.064% the speed of light.
  The project was announced in the fiscal 2009 budget year. The cost of the project is US$1.5 billion. Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory designed and built the spacecraft, which was launched on August 12, 2018. It became the first NASA spacecraft named after a living person, honoring physicist Eugene Newman Parker, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago.
  A memory card containing the names of over 1.1 million people was mounted on a plaque and installed below the spacecraft's high-gain antenna on May 18, 2018. The card also contains photos of Parker and a copy of his 1958 scientific paper predicting important aspects of solar physics.
  On October 29, 2018, at about 18:04 UTC, the spacecraft became the closest ever artificial object to the Sun.
context_section_description: The Parker Solar Probe is the first spacecraft to fly into the low solar corona. It will assess the structure and dynamics of the Sun's coronal plasma and magnetic field, the energy flow that heats the solar corona and impels the solar wind, and the mechanisms that accelerate energetic particles.
  The spacecraft's systems are protected from the extreme heat and radiation near the Sun by a solar shield. Incident solar radiation at perihelion is approximately 650 kW/m², or 475 times the intensity at Earth orbit. The solar shield is hexagonal, mounted on the Sun-facing side of the spacecraft, 2.3 m (7.5 ft) in diameter, 11.4 cm (4.5 in) thick, and is made of reinforced carbon–carbon composite, which is designed to withstand temperatures outside the spacecraft of about 1,370 °C (2,500 °F).
  A white reflective alumina surface layer minimizes absorption. The spacecraft systems and scientific instruments are located in the central portion of the shield's shadow, where direct radiation from the Sun is fully blocked. If the shield were not between the spacecraft and the Sun, the probe would be damaged and become inoperative within tens of seconds. As radio communication with Earth will take about eight minutes in each direction, the Parker Solar Probe will have to act autonomously and rapidly to protect itself. This will be done using four light sensors to detect the first traces of direct sunlight coming from the shield limits and engaging movements from reaction wheels to reposition the spacecraft within the shadow again. According to project scientist Nicky Fox, the team describe it as "the most autonomous spacecraft that has ever flown".
  The primary power for the mission is a dual system of solar panels (photovoltaic arrays). A primary photovoltaic array, used for the portion of the mission outside 0.25 au, is retracted behind the shadow shield during the close approach to the Sun, and a much smaller secondary array powers the spacecraft through closest approach. This secondary array uses pumped-fluid cooling to maintain operating temperature of the solar panels and instrumentation.
caption: The thermal testing of the spacecraft.
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