discoveries from NASA'S parker solar probe

---

Last year we heard from the mission scientists and watched the live liftoff here. Now we have 5 new discoveries from Parker Probe ! The spacecraft also recorded a number of small bursts of energetic particles (mostly protons) coming from the sun. These might provide the seeds for more voluminous particle tsunamis sometimes carried aloft as part of the solar wind.

Parker’s job is far from over. On each of its next 18 orbits, the spacecraft will use the gravity of Venus to inch a little closer to the sun.

Then its last three orbits, starting in December 2024, will bring Parker within just 6 million kilometers of the sun’s surface, more than seven times as close as any previous mission, putting all of Parker’s special protective technology to the test.

Rogue plasma waves. Floating magnetic islands. Showers of charged particles. These are some of the things NASA’s Parker Solar Probe witnessed during its first two intimate encounters with the sun.

Parker probe is currently on an elliptical orbit that brings it near the sun about every five months (SN: 8/12/18). With its latest close encounter September 1, the probe has now completed three of those trips.

Each time, the spacecraft flew within about 24 million kilometers of the sun’s surface — about twice as close as the planet Mercury ever gets.


Parker is already serving up plenty of surprises from its first two trips. For example, “we’ve discovered some unexpected intense rogue [plasma] waves rattling through the sun’s atmosphere,” says mission scientist Justin Kasper, a physicist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

2018 blog entry

Lets take a look at a group of women from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab who are key to the success of NASA's Parker Solar Probe, a groundbreaking mission to explore our Sun, scheduled to launch on July 31. 

Lets meet APL's Nicola Fox, project scientist; Betsy Congdon, lead thermal protection system engineer; Yanping Guo, mission design and navigation manager; and Annette Dolbow, integration and test lead engineer,  just a few of the women working to ready the Parker Solar Probe spacecraft for its historic journey to our star.

updates from nasa's parker solar probe mission

---

WOMEN BEHIND THE PARKER SOLAR PROBE​

I of IV: Women on a Mission

---

II of III: Parker Solar Probe Arrives in Florida

---

III of III: lift off!