page_title: Parker Solar Probe
section_title: Investigations
hierarchical_section_title: Parker Solar Probe / Science goals / Investigations
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: An APL technician prepares the Energetic Particle Instrument-Low Energy (EPI-Lo) for installation on NASA’s Solar Probe Plus spacecraft.
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: To achieve these goals, the mission will perform five major experiments or investigations:
  Electromagnetic Fields Investigation (FIELDS) – This investigation will make direct measurements of electric and magnetic fields, radio waves, Poynting flux, absolute plasma density, and electron temperature. It consists of two flux-gate magnetometers, a search-coil magnetometer, and 5 plasma voltage sensors. The Principal investigator is Stuart Bale, at the University of California, Berkeley
  Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun (IS☉IS) – This investigation will measure  energetic electrons, protons and heavy ions. The instrument suite comprises two independent Energetic Particle Instruments, the EPI-Hi and EPI-Lo studying higher and lower energy particles  The Principal investigator is David McComas, at the Princeton University
  Wide-field Imager for Solar Probe (WISPR) – These optical telescopes will acquire  images of the corona and inner heliosphere. The Principal Investigator is Russell Howard, at the Naval Research Laboratory
  Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons (SWEAP) – This investigation will count the  electrons, protons and helium ions, and measure their properties such as velocity, density, and temperature. Its main instruments are the Solar Probe Analyzers (SPAN, two electrostatic analyzers) and the Solar Probe Cup (SPC, a Faraday cup). The Principal Investigator is Justin Kasper at the University of Michigan and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
  Heliospheric Origins with Solar Probe Plus (HeliOSPP) – A theory and modeling investigation to maximize the scientific return from the mission. The Principal Investigator is Marco Velli at UCLA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
caption: The EPI-Lo instrument for IS☉IS is prepared.
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