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The Parker Solar Probe was launched last weekend
and has commenced its seven year journey to probe the outer corona of the Sun.
It will approach to within 9 solar radii (6.2 million kilometers) from the "surface"
of the Sun and will travel, at perihelion, or closest approach, as fast as 700,000 km/h.
The spacecraft was named after physicist Eugene Parker, who first proposed the existence of the solar wind,
a constant stream of particles escaping from the sun.
This is the first time a NASA spacecraft was named after a living person.
(Parker's theoretical modeling in the mid-1950s was controversial, and when he submitted his results to The Astrophysical Journal, two reviewers rejected it!)
The image above shows the evolution of the Parker Solar Probe's orbit:
over its lifetime it will make seven fly-bys of Venus, each time modifying its orbit to pass
closer to the Sun. Over its nominal 7 year lifetime it will swing by the sun 26 times.
(Image credit: NASA)
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