Parker Solar Probe by the Helios 2 spacecraft. The "Parker Solar Probe" concept originates from a predecessor "Solar Orbiter" project conceived in the 1990s. Similar in design and objectives, the "Solar Probe" mission served as one of the centerpieces of the eponymous Outer Planet/Solar Probe (OPSP) program formulated by NASA. The first three missions of the program were planned to be: the "Solar Orbiter", the Pluto and Kuiper belt reconnaissance mission "Pluto Kuiper Express", and the "Europa Orbiter" astrobiology mission focused on Europa. The original "Solar Probe" design used a gravity assist from Jupiter to enter a polar orbit which dropped almost directly
A Beautiful Planet twisted, inverted; you can completely lose your spatial awareness about where you are and what your attitude is, and you can easily get tangled up in that safety tether if you're not cautious. Every single movement you make, you're making an effort to think [things] through." After spending almost the entire film scrutinizing the Earth and the ISS (with its astronauts) in low Earth orbit, one of the final scenes of "A Beautiful Planet" briefly examines an important extrasolar planet (a planet outside of our solar system) which was discovered in 2014. The planet, Kepler-186f, was the first approximately-Earth-sized planet