Aljazeera: Next week NASA is hoping to launch a probe, which will fly closer to the Sun than any other spacecraft has ever ventured to study the outermost part of its atmosphere.The Parker Solar Probe is set to launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida on August 11 and embark on a daring seven year mission.
During this time the small robotic spacecraft, the size of a small car, will steadily reduce its orbit around the Sun.At its closest point, it is set to fly into the Sun’s corona, 6.1 million km from the solar surface. Although it might sound like a long way, it’s far closer than other probes have travelled. The previous closest pass to the Sun was by a probe called Helios 2, which came within 43 million km in 1976. By way of comparison, the average distance from the Sun to the Earth is 150 million km.The aim of the mission is to shed more light on solar wind – the charged particles which hurtle from the Sun into space. It takes these winds around 40 hours to reach Earth and it is these that give rise to the dramatic light displays known as the aurora borealis, or the aurora australis.Auroras may be pretty, but a strong blast of solar wind can have more destructive consequences.It can cause disturbances to our planet’s magnetic field and can play havoc with communications technology on Earth.