SEE – July 21th:NASA is preparing to send a spacecraft that is set to approach the Sun from an unprecedented close point, Reuters reported yaesterday.
The 'Parker Solar Probe', a robotic spacecraft which is as small as a car, is set to be launcehed from Florida by August 6th, and fly into the Sun's corona within 6.1 million km from the solar surface, seven times closer than the previous spacecraft which was sent in 1976.
Johns Hopkins University's applied physics lab. told a news conference on Friday that the project, which costs $1.5 billion, is the first major mission under NASA's 'Living With a Star' program.
The probe is set to use seven Venus flybys over nearly seven years to steadily reduce its orbit around the Sun, using instruments designed to image the solar wind and study electric and magnetic fields, coronal plasma and energetic particles.