Dr. Eugene N. Parker, 1927-2022.
Dr. Parker was a visionary in heliophysics, the science of the Sun and its interactions with the solar system.
Well, the star is the primary puzzle in the universe because it’s the one star we can observe in detail
and stars are complicated things.
You can’t imagine all the strange things that have been discovered in the Sun.
In the mid-1950s, he developed the theory of solar wind – the constant flow of particles coming from the Sun.
60 years later, a spacecraft was built to study the solar wind up close.
It is my great honor, a few days before your 90th birthday, Gene,
to announce that we’re renaming the Solar Probe Plus spacecraft
to be known from now on as the Parker Solar Probe. Congratulations.
Dr. Parker became the first person to witness the launch of a NASA spacecraft bearing his own name.
I was very moved by the fact that that spacecraft was going off into the night sky
and it’ll never come back.
When you have a space mission into an unknown place,
you find remarkable things that you did not anticipate.
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe continues its mission today
in pursuit of the pioneering questions Dr. Parker first envisaged more than a half century ago.
In memory of Dr. Eugene N. Parker, 1927-2022.