Journey to the Sun!

About 93 million miles from Earth, a massive ball of burning gas hurtles through space. It’s the only star in our solar system. You know it as the sun!

We see the sun and feel its warmth every day. But to scientists, much about the sun is a mystery. That’s because no one has ever studied it up close. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is changing that.

A probe is a type of spacecraft with no people inside. Scientists control it from Earth. NASA launched the Parker Solar Probe into space in 2018. Now it’s orbiting, or circling, the sun.

On December 24, 2024, the probe will travel within
3.8 million miles of the sun’s surface. That may sound far. But it’s closer than any spacecraft has ever gotten to the sun!

“We’re diving into the sun’s atmosphere,” says Nour Rawafi, the mission’s lead scientist. Rawafi hopes the probe will help uncover some of the sun’s secrets.

The sun’s surface is about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s five times hotter than Earth’s hottest lava! The layer of gases surrounding the sun is even hotter. The corona, the outer part of the sun’s atmosphere, can be more than 2 million degrees!

Engineers designed a shield to keep the probe from melting. The hexagon-shaped device is 8 feet across and 4.5 inches thick. It’s made of carbon, a superstrong material. The shield acts like an umbrella, shading the probe from the sun’s extreme heat.

So far, the shield is working. In 2021, the probe traveled into the corona, about 8.1 million miles from the sun’s surface. The probe collected samples of gases and took photos of the star.