Millions of Degrees and Plasma Dreams: NASA's Parker Solar Probe Basks in the Sun

[Judi Lynn]

By Doris Elin Salazar, Space.com Contributor | December 13, 2018 12:43pm ET

The Parker Solar Probe iThe mission hopes to sample plasma from the solar corona to see what's going on there. The corona, which means "crown" in Latin and Spanish, is the plasma halo of the star and is its outermost layer of atmosphere. [The Greatest Missions to the Sun]s doing well after its first flyby of the sun, and it will soon begin returning groundbreaking data about how our star behaves.

Yesterday (Dec. 12), four researchers gathered at this year's fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in Washington, D.C., to share the early success of NASA's Parker Solar Probe.

The director of NASA's Heliophysics Division, Nicky Fox, started off the news briefing, which was streamed live online, by describing the decades of work that led up to this mission and the "balmy" Florida evening this past August when the Parker Solar Probe finally launched toward the sun.

The mission hopes to sample plasma from the solar corona to see what's going on there. The corona, which means "crown" in Latin and Spanish, is the plasma halo of the star and is its outermost layer of atmosphere. [The Greatest Missions to the Sun]

More:
https://www.space.com/42726-parker-solar-probe-first-sun-science-results.html

[lastlib]

1. Wouldn't they be able to get closer if they went at night??

[Judi Lynn]

2. No doubt! n/t