NASA launches Parker Solar Probe to touch Sun

Humanity will witness a great space discovery, as NASA decided to send a spacecraft on Saturday from US Florida to the Sun.

The Parker Solar Probe will blast off on a course that swings past Venus and circles around the sun before ping into the star’s hot atmosphere, according to The Guardian.

"We've been studying the Sun for decades, and now we're finally going to go where the action is," Alex Young, a solar scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, said.

The probe will be launched on a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket. Surely it needs a powerful rocket to get out of the Earth's orbit and go to the Sun despite the probe's size is like a family car.

Traveling at 724,000kph, the Parker Solar Probe will spend seven years to reach the Sun's minimum closest approach. But it will reach the first closest approach in November, starting to send data to our home.

NASA explained why it will send the probe, saying "The observations and data could provide insight about the physics of stars, change what we know about the mysterious corona, increase understanding of solar wind and help improve forecasting of major space weather events."

It also added "Those events can affect satellites and astronauts as well as the Earth -- including power grids and radiation exposure on airline flights."