It’s time for another historic NASA mission to begin. This time, it isn’t to another world – this isn’t a Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, or even a Pluto probe. Oh no, this is something much more intense.
Tonight or, more correctly, early this Saturday Morning, August 11th 2018 a Delta IV Heavy booster will launch from Launch Complex 37 (the same booster type and launch facility as the Orion test flight in 2014) carrying the Parker Solar Probe on a mission to study the Sun. Very closely.
The Parker Solar Probe will get within 4 million miles of the surface of the Sun – an incredibly close distance, closer than any probe we’ve launched before – to study both the Sun’s surface and it’s peculiar atmosphere. The Sun is, after all, a perfectly typical star, and it’s the only star close enough for us to study, so anything we learn here will be invaluable to understanding how most stars in the Universe work.
The Parker Solar Probe will have to endure incredible temperatures as it passes close to the Sun, but that’s not even the start of difficulties for PSP. Just to get to the Sun will require a unique orbital insertion that only the Delta IV Heavy can provide – and one that, with gravitational assists from the planet Venus, will make the Parker Solar Probe the fastest man made object in history: In fact, PSP will, at its closest point to the Sun, be traveling at 430,000 Miles per Hour, or, if you prefer, 0.06% the speed of light!
At launch it will still be breaking a record, leaving Earth orbit at a speed of about 43,000 MPH, much faster than New Horizons in 2006.
With all this being said, I felt the sharing of a video was in order, and what better than this video from NASA Goddard covering the mission of the Parker Solar Probe. It’s funny, this is normally the kind of watered down, rather stylized video that would annoy me, but I rather like how the woman presents the facts here, and that they don’t really sugar coat things – they keep it simple, but don’t baby the audience , unlike some other space related promotional videos out there.
Keep watching this space – there’s a ton more to come on PSP in these next few hours!
http://parkersolarprobe.jhuapl.edu/