NASA's historic Parker Solar Probe mission is revolutionizing our understanding of the Sun, where changing conditions can propagate out into the solar system, affecting Earth and other worlds. Parker Solar Probe travels through the Sun’s atmosphere, closer to the surface than any spacecraft before it, facing brutal heat and radiation conditions to provide humanity with the closest-ever observations of a star.

Parker Solar Probe performs its scientific investigations in a hazardous region of intense heat and solar radiation. The spacecraft will fly close enough to the Sun to watch the solar wind speed up from subsonic to supersonic, and it will fly though the birthplace of the highest-energy solar particles.

To perform these unprecedented investigations, the spacecraft and instruments are protected from the Sun’s heat by a 4.5-inch-thick (11.43 cm) carbon-composite shield, which needs to withstand temperatures outside the spacecraft that reach nearly 2,500 F (1,377 C).

On August 13, 2021 at 5:50 a.m. mission controllers saw that the spacecraft called Parker Solar Prove was still functioning after being close to the sun. This was the closest that any spacecraft has ever been to the sun. The project was first announced in 2009 and it cost about 1.5 billion US dollars. A fun fact about the name of this spacecraft is it was the first spacecraft named after a person, Eugene Newman Parker. It was about 6.5 million miles away from the sun. The probe is the first probe to be close to the sun. Currently, it is only about fifteen million miles away from it. Many scientists who worked on this parker solar probe believe that it is the beginning of a revolution to discover our solar system and even over that in the near future.

This is a model of the Parker Solar Probe that you can move around and look at:

I Portrayed above is a rendered, interactable 3D model of the distinguished Parker Solar Probe I

NASA studies the Sun for numerous reasons.

• The Sun’s variable radiation influences the habitability of Earth, which can be either be helpful or detrimental to life.

• The accompanying energy and plasma the Sun sends out, can create changes in the space weather around us and interfere with our space technology and communications systems.

• The Sun is the only star we can study up close, and can inform our research of other stars throughout the universe.

The magnetosphere is a bubble of magnetic fields that surrounds Earth, created by the natural magnetism of the planet. The magnetosphere protects humans on Earth from incoming energy from the Sun, however it does change shape and size in response to such space weather, and these fluctuations can degrade communication signals and cause unexpected electrical surges in power grids. NASA studies the magnetosphere to better understand its role in our space environment. By studying this space environment close to home, we can better understand the nature of space throughout the universe. Such research helps unravel the fundamental physics of space, which is dominated by complex electromagnetic interactions unlike what we experience day-to-day on Earth.

Solar Wind may sound confusing but it is plasma that is continuously ejected from the sun's surface into and through interplanetary space. This means plasma, which is from high temperatures that is spread around space around the sun for miles and even to the earth. In the outer layer of the sun, the plasma of the outer layer can not be hold by the gravity that normally holds the sun together. This causes the plasma to go out around the sun.

The first it is helping with sending the first man and woman into the woman in 2024. This is called the Artemis Program and it is greatly helping us understand one of the problems that would cause a short life for them - the sun. We also now see the solar wind that is around us. This is important because before we saw this from far away but this is different. It is like seeing a stream from far away but also seeing it once in a closer views. This is a lot more different. Astronauts are learning more information on why solar winds only react with the flips of the magnetic field up to Mercury. The Park Solar Probe started having solar wind when it was around 20 million miles away from the sun. There are also a few more particles that the sun gives that may be dangerous to the astronauts in space. The dust also seemed to thin out around 7 million miles away from the sun. You may ask why? The sun's heat burns away the dust that may turn it into solar wind. This is still a problem but scientists have learned that from this. Another important point to make is this mission is also helping us understand why solar wind happen and more about stars and how the magnetic field would happen around the star.