That's right.
So NASA's Parker Solar Probe, which launched in 2018,
has been using Venus gravity assist to get closer and closer to the sun.
And most recently, it had a Venus gravity assist.
And so now it's going to fly within 3.83 million miles of the surface of the sun,
which is closer than any human made object has ever gone
before.
That's right.
Even though
the sun is a constant in our sky, the sun is not constant at all.
The sun constantly has magnetic explosions and little bursts of energy
that come out, and sometimes big burst of energy like the solar storms.
And by measuring that process, as it happens,
so close to where its original energy source was, we can really understand
more about the energization and the
the structures as they evolve through the solar system.
I am so excited about
Parker touching the top edges of the,
corona, the solar corona, the outer atmosphere of the sun,
and by measuring it in such detail so close,
we can combine that with what we already know about the sun
and the solar system and that that material as that
fills the solar system from our other spacecraft.
But by putting all of these pieces together, we can really learn more
about the solar corona and that material as it fills
our solar system.
So during a total solar eclipse, that's when the moon comes
between us here on the Earth and the sun, and it blocks out the main bright
part of the sun
so that we can see the solar corona, the outer atmosphere of the sun.
That outer atmosphere is extremely hot
and it flows outwards, filling our solar system.
And Parker is flying through the outer reaches of that solar corona.
Really understanding how that energy is put into that material in the first place.
Yeah, NASA has a number of cool missions coming up.
One of the missions is called Punch.
Punch has,
3D imaging capability.
So it's going to be able
to see the corona in three dimensions, the outer atmosphere of the sun,
and watch that corona as it expands outwards into the solar system
and CODEX, which is, coronagraph that's on the International Space Station.
So that also is going to be looking at the corona
and measuring the temperature and the velocity of that,
of that material as it flows outwards, which we can compare directly
with what Parker measures in detail in those outer
reaches of the corona.
We have
never had a human made object so close to the sun.
To get that close, we had to use Venus to have our gravity assist,
to slow Parker down so that it can get that close.
Also, we had to not melt.
That's why the Parker has this heat shield that holds the instruments
at room temperature and keeps the heat of the sun away.
And these are just amazing feats.
And so it's so amazing that we are so close
and really getting to measure in detail this material up close.
You can learn
more about Parker Solar Probe at NASA.gov/parker
and you can also check us out on @NASASun.