Voyage to the Sun

Life on Earth wouldn’t exist without the sun’s heat and light. But scientists still have a lot to learn about the bright, fiery star at the center of our solar system.

That’s why last August, the U.S. space agency NASA launched the Parker Solar Probe. Over seven years, the spacecraft will orbit, or travel around, the sun 24 times (see The Probe’s Path). It will use high-tech instruments to study the star. Scientists hope the data the probe gathers will help unlock some of the sun’s mysteries. “It’s a voyage of discovery,” says Nicola Fox, a NASA scientist who worked on the mission.  

The sun gives off heat and light. Life on Earth wouldn’t exist without it. The bright and hot star sits at the center of our solar system. But scientists still have a lot to learn about it.

That’s why the U.S. space agency NASA launched a spacecraft last August. It’s called the Parker Solar Probe. It will orbit, or travel around, the sun. The probe will make this trip 24 times over seven years (see The Probe’s Path). It will use high-tech instruments to study the star. The probe will gather a lot of data. Scientists hope it will help unlock some of the sun’s mysteries. “It’s a voyage of discovery,” says Nicola Fox. She’s a NASA scientist. She worked on the mission.

The project has two main goals. One is to study the solar wind. That’s a stream of charged particles that travel from the sun through the solar system. Sometimes there are strong bursts of these particles. The explosions can damage satellites and disrupt the power grids that send electricity to our homes. Scientists hope that learning more about the solar wind will help them predict these bursts and protect our technology.

The probe is also studying the sun’s atmosphere, the layers of gas around the sun. The outer layer is called the corona. Temperatures usually drop as you move away from a heat source. But the corona is 300 times hotter than the sun. To find out why, the probe is flying through the corona to study it up close. It will come within 6.1 million kilometers (3.8 million miles) of the sun—closer than any other spacecraft has! 

Eventually, the probe will burn up in the extreme heat. But the data it collects could change our understanding of the sun forever. “We’re going to a part of the solar system we’ve never been to before,” says Fox. “And it’s probably the most important.”  

The project has two main goals. One is to study the solar wind. That’s a stream of charged particles. They travel from the sun through the solar system. Sometimes there are strong bursts of these particles. The bursts can harm satellites. They can disrupt power grids. Those systems send electricity to our homes. Scientists want to learn more about the solar wind. They hope it will help them predict these bursts. Then they can better protect our technology.

The probe is also studying the sun’s atmosphere. This layer of gases surrounds the sun. The outer part of the sun’s atmosphere is called the corona. Temperatures usually drop as you move away from a heat source. But the corona is 300 times hotter than the sun’s surface. Scientists want to find out why. So the probe is flying through the corona to study it up close. It will come within 6.1 million kilometers (3.8 million miles) of the sun. That's closer than any other spacecraft has!

Eventually, the probe will burn up in the high heat. But the data it collects could change what we know about the sun forever. “We’re going to a part of the solar system we’ve never been to before,” says Fox. “And it’s probably the most important.”