What if you could send a robot to touch the Sun without it melting into a puddle?

The Day a Spacecraft Touched the Sun's Neighborhood!

NASA's Parker Solar Probe began the closest journey to our star ever attempted

NASA announced a spacecraft that would fly closer to the Sun than anything ever before!

On August 7, 2018, NASA announced something that sounded like science fiction: they were about to launch a spacecraft that would actually fly INTO the Sun's atmosphere! The Parker Solar Probe was getting ready to become the fastest human-made object ever created.

But wait — wouldn't it melt? Great question! Scientists built an incredible heat shield just 4.5 inches thick that could protect the spacecraft from temperatures reaching 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit. That's hot enough to melt steel! Yet behind that amazing shield, the instruments stayed at a cool room temperature.

Here's where it gets wild: to reach the Sun, the probe had to become FAST. We're talking 430,000 miles per hour fast! That's so speedy you could fly from New York to London in just 30 seconds. Zoom!

The Parker Solar Probe was named after Eugene Parker, a scientist who figured out that the Sun constantly shoots out streams of particles called solar wind. He was 91 years old when the spacecraft launched, making him the first living person to have a NASA mission named after them!

💡 The Parker Solar Probe travels so fast that at top speed, it could fly from Philadelphia to Washington D.C. in just ONE SECOND!