

The Parker Solar Probe, a robotic spacecraft the size of a small car, is slated to launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida, with Aug. 11 targeted as the launch date for the planned seven-year mission. It is set to fly into the Sun’s corona within 3.8 million miles (6.1 million km) from the solar surface, seven times closer than any other spacecraft.

“We’re going to be very, very close. We’re going to be actually touching the particles of the sun,” NASA Planetary Scientist Geronimo Villanueva said on Thursday (August 2).



“When we get a massive storm happening in the sun, they may kill, you know, a satellite or a power grid here our own planet. To understand how that process happens, how long it takes, when we have to be protected from that — this is the key thing we are answering with this mission,” Villanueva said.




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