Parker Solar Probe
Parker Solar Probe (previously NASA Solar Probe, Solar Probe Plus, or Solar Probe+) is a planned NASA robotic spacecraft to probe the outer corona of the Sun . It will approach to within 8.5 solar radii (5.9 million kilometers or 3.67 million miles) to the 'surface' ( photosphere ) of the Sun. [2] The project was announced as a new mission start in the fiscal 2009 budget year. On May 1, 2008 Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory announced it will design and build the spacecraft, on a schedule to launch it in 2015. [3] The launch date has since been pushed back to 2018, [4] with the Delta IV Heavy as the launch vehicle. [1] On May 31st, 2017 the probe was renamed after solar astrophysicist Eugene Parker [5] . According to NASA, this was the first time in history a space vessel was named after a living person. [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Solar_Probe NASA PSP