Goddard Engineering and Technology Directorate

Parker Solar Probe

Delta IV Heavy Propellant Loading Underway for Parker Solar Probe.
The United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket with the Parker Solar Probe onboard is seen shortly after the Mobile Service Tower was rolled back, Friday, Aug. 10, 2018, Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Parker Solar Probe is humanity’s first-ever mission into a part of the Sun’s atmosphere called the corona. Here it will directly explore solar processes that are key to understanding and forecasting space weather events that can impact life on Earth. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

The NASA Parker Solar Probe mission is a mission designed to help humanity better understand the Sun, where changing conditions can propagate out into the solar system, affecting Earth and other worlds. As such, the primary goals are to examine the acceleration of solar wind through the movement of heat and energy in the Sun’s corona in addition to study solar energetic particles.

The probe was launched on Delta IV on Aug. 12, 2018, and faces temperatures that reach approximately 2,500 F (1,377 C). Goddard Space Flight Center’s Living with a Star Program flight program encapsulates the Parker Solar Probe.

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