Space: Parker Solar Probe

American robotic spacecraft launched by NASA and now en route to probe the outer corona of the Sun. It will approach to within 8.86 solar radii (6.2 million kilometers or 3.85 million miles) from the "surface" (photosphere) of the Sun and will travel, at closest approach, as fast as 700,000 km/h (430,000 mph). The planned mission duration is 6 years, 321 days (First close approach to the Sun on 19 December 2024).

The project was announced in the fiscal 2009 budget year. Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory designed and built the spacecraft, which was originally scheduled to launch in 2015. This was the first time a NASA spacecraft was named after a living person, honoring physicist Eugene Parker, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago.

A memory card containing the names of over 1.1 million people was mounted on a plaque and installed below the spacecraft’s high-gain antenna on 18 May 2018. The card also contains photos of Parker and a copy of his 1958 scientific paper predicting important aspects of solar physics.