Parker Solar Probe

PSP

Mission Profile

Parker Solar Probe is NASA's mission to study the Sun's corona by flying closer to our star than any previous spacecraft, launched on 12 August 2018 aboard a Delta IV Heavy with an upper stage and using multiple Venus gravity assists to spiral inward toward the Sun. By 2025 it had reached within 6.2 million km of the solar surface — within the outer corona itself — travelling at speeds exceeding 600,000 km/h, faster than any human-made object. Its instruments measure the solar wind, magnetic fields, energetic particles, and plasma waves in the corona and inner heliosphere, addressing decades-old questions about why the corona is hundreds of times hotter than the photosphere and how the solar wind is accelerated. Parker Solar Probe completed its first transit through the corona in December 2021, becoming the first spacecraft to fly through the Sun's outer atmosphere.