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Parker Solar Probe

launched on 12 August 2018


It became the first NASA spacecraft named after a living person, honoring nonagenarian physicist Eugene Newman Parker, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago

The Parker Solar Probe is the first spacecraft to fly into the low solar corona.


It will assess the structure and dynamics of the Sun's coronal plasma and magnetic field, the energy flow that heats the solar corona and impels the solar wind, and the mechanisms that accelerate energetic particles.


The Parker Solar Probe mission design uses repeated gravity assists at Venus to incrementally decrease its orbital perihelion to achieve a final altitude (above the surface) of approximately 8.5 solar radii, or about 6×106 km (3.7×106 mi; 0.040 au).


The goals of the Parker solar probe include

· Trace the flow of energy that heats the corona and accelerates the solar wind.

· Determine the structure and dynamics of the magnetic fields at the sources of solar wind.

· Determine what mechanisms accelerate and transport energetic particles.


Some facts about Eugene Newman Parker

  • Born on June 10, 1927, in Michigan, Parker received a B.S. in physics from Michigan State University and a Ph.D. from Caltech in 1951.

  • He then taught at the University of Utah, and since 1955, Parker has held faculty positions at the University of Chicago and at its Fermi Institute.

  • He has received numerous awards for his research, including the George Ellery Hale Prize, the National Medal of Science, the Bruce Medal, the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Kyoto Prize, the James Clerk Maxwell Prize, and the Crafoord Prize in Astronomy.




 
 
 

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