On Sept. 21, 2017, engineers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, lowered the thermal protection system – the heat shield – onto the spacecraft for a test of alignment as part of integration and testing. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL
On Sept. 25, 2017, media were invited to see NASA's Parker Solar Probe in its flight configuration at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, where it is being built. The revolutionary heat shield that will protect the first spacecraft to fly directly into the Sun's atmosphere was installed for the first time on Sept. 21. This is the only time the spacecraft will have its thermal protection system—which will reach temperatures of 2,500 degrees F while at the Sun—attached until just before launch.
Parker Solar Probe is scheduled for launch on July 31, 2018, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. The spacecraft will explore the Sun's outer atmosphere and make critical observations that will answer decades-old questions about the physics of how stars work. The resulting data will improve forecasts of major space weather events that impact life on Earth, as well as satellites and astronauts in space.
In this time-lapse video taken on Sept. 21, 2017, the thermal protection system – the heat shield -- for NASA’s Parker Solar Probe spacecraft is shown during installation at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. This 4.5-inch thick, eight-foot diameter shield protects the spacecraft and its instruments against the intense heat and energy of the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, through which the spacecraft will fly on a mission of extreme exploration. Credit: NASA
Nicola Fox, the project scientist for NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, answers media questions on Sept. 25, 2017, in the clean room at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, with the spacecraft in the background. Credit: NASA
NASA’s Parker Solar in the clean room at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, on Sept. 25, 2017. It is shown with the thermal protection system – the heat shield – on top, which is one of the few times it is integrated with the space craft before it launches. Credit: NASA
A new NASA mission aims to brush by the sun, coming closer than any spacecraft in history to its scorching heat and radiation in order to reveal how stars are made, the US space agency said Wednesday.
NASA's first mission to "touch" the sun has passed a critical development milestone that keeps it well on track toward its scheduled summer 2018 launch.
NASA's Solar Probe Plus mission—which will fly closer to the sun than any spacecraft has before—reached a major milestone last month when it successfully completed its Critical Design Review, or CDR.
From prayer and sacrifice to sunbathing, humans have worshipped the sun since time immemorial. And it's no wonder. At around 150m km away, it is close enough to provide the light, heat and energy to sustain the entire human ...
A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket lifts off from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, with NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, TDRS-M. TDRS-M. Liftoff was at 8:29 a.m. EDT.
Progress continues on the development of NOAA's GOES-S and GOES-T spacecraft that will follow the successful launch of the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite or GOES-R, renamed GOES-16 upon reaching geostationary ...
A new study published online in Meteoritics and Planetary Science finds that our most common meteorites, those known as L chondrites, come from at least two different debris fields in the asteroid belt. The belt contains ...
A San Diego State University astrophysicist has helped discover evidence of a gigantic remnant surrounding an exploding star—a shell of material so huge, it must have been erupting on a regular basis for millions of years.
Even Georgia O'Keeffe noticed the pin-sized blisters bubbling on the surface of her paintings. For decades, conservationists and scholars assumed these tiny protrusions were grains of sand, kicked up from the New Mexico desert ...
Peruvian archaeologists discovered an Incan tomb in the north of the country where an elite member of the pre-Columbian empire was buried, one of the investigators announced Friday.
Astronomers have spent decades looking for something that sounds like it would be hard to miss: about a third of the "normal" matter in the Universe. New results from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory may have helped them ...
Impacts from climate change are not always easy to see. But for many local businesses in coastal communities across the United States, the evidence is right outside their doors—or in their parking lots.
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A real scorcher: NASA probe to fly into sun's atmosphere (Update)
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