NASA has launched a mission to study the Sun’s atmosphere and wind that will come far closer to our star than any other craft before. The Parker Solar Probe took off today from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 03:33 local time aboard a Delta IV rocket. During the mission’s seven-year lifespan, it will perform 24 orbits around the Sun coming as close as 6.1 million kilometres to its surface – well within the orbit of Mercury.

To do so, the Parker Solar Probe will carry four instruments. One instrument, dubbed FIELDS and built by the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, will measure the electric field around the spacecraft with five 2 m-long antennas made of a niobium alloy that can withstand high temperatures. FIELDS will also contain three small magnetometers to measure magnetic fields. The other three instruments are an imager and two dedicated particle analysers.

Hotter than the sun

To withstand the intense temperatures, which can reach almost 1400 C, the spacecraft and instruments will be protected by a 11.4 cm carbon-composite shield. “We’ll be going where no spacecraft has dared go before – within the corona of a star,” says Parker Solar Probe project scientist Nicky Fox from Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. “With each orbit, we’ll be seeing new regions of the Sun’s atmosphere and learning things about stellar mechanics that we’ve wanted to explore for decades.”

We’ll be going where no spacecraft has dared go before – within the corona of a star.

To do so, the Parker Solar Probe will carry four instruments. One instrument, dubbed FIELDS and built by the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, will measure the electric field around the spacecraft with five 2 m-long antennas made of a niobium alloy that can withstand high temperatures. FIELDS will also contain three small magnetometers to measure magnetic fields. The other three instruments are an imager and two dedicated particle analysers.