Launch of Parker Solar Probe

The Parker Solar Probe is a NASA spacecraft launched on a Delta IV Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral to study the Sun's outer atmosphere, the corona, closer than any earlier mission. It is named after the astrophysicist Eugene Parker, who proposed the existence of the solar wind and who was alive to see the launch. The probe uses repeated flybys of Venus to reduce its orbit around the Sun, and it is protected from the intense heat by a carbon-composite shield. In 2021 it became the first spacecraft to pass through the corona. Its measurements are helping scientists understand why the corona is much hotter than the Sun's surface and how the solar wind is accelerated.

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