The National Aeronautics And Space Administration (NASA) has plans to fly a spacecraft straight into the sun next year.
In a move that completely overshadows Icarus, the space agency is planning humanity’s first ever trip to a star and it will be one of the biggest achievements in the history of space exploration.
The melting mission is scheduled to launch in summer 2018 where the Solar Probe Plus will fly within four million miles of the star of hot plasma.
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It will give us our first look into the solar atmosphere and be subjected to heat and radiation like no other man made structure has before.
The purpose of this mission is to gain insight into the sun’s outer atmosphere and understand how stars work.
NASA said:
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.
The probe will withstand temperatures of nearly 1.377 Celsius (2,500 Fahrenheit), and will come ‘well within the orbit of Mercury’.
The spacecraft has been especially designed to resist the sun’s heat with a carbon-composite heat shield that is 11.43cm thick.
Parker Solar Probe will be the name of the probe after the influential solar scientist Eugene Parker.
