Parker Solar Probe
The probe that flies through the Sun's outer atmosphere, the corona, to study how it is heated and how the solar wind is accelerated. A carbon-composite heat shield 11.4 cm thick faces temperatures near 1,400 °C while the instruments behind it stay close to room temperature. Using seven flybys of Venus to shrink its orbit, it passes 6.1 million km from the Sun's surface at about 690,000 km/h, the fastest object ever built.
Key figures
- Builder
- Johns Hopkins APL
- Status
- In service
- First flight
- 2018
- Height
- 3 m
- Diameter
- 2.3 m
- Mass at launch
- 0.69 t