NASA’s Parker Solar Probe

In the 20th and 21st centuries, scientists have sent spacecraft to study the Sun close-up. In 1990, the Ulysses probe orbited the Sun three times. It helped determine that the Sun’s magnetic field reverses every 11 years.

On May 31, 2017, NASA has renamed the Solar Probe Plus spacecraft humanity's first mission to a star as the “Parker Solar Probe” in honor of American astrophysicist Eugene Parker.

Eugene Newman Parker developed the theory of the supersonic solar wind and predicted the Parker spiral shape of the solar magnetic field in the outer Solar System.

In 2018, NASA launched the Parker Solar Probe, which will travel far closer to the Sun than any other spacecraft.

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe mission will revolutionize human understanding of the Sun. The mission will “touch the Sun,” flying directly through the solar corona, facing brutal heat and radiation conditions and providing unprecedented, close-up observations of the star human live with.

With the cost of project US$1.5 billion, Parker Solar Probe was launched on 12 August 2018.
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe