Highlight Lecture 2 : The Challenge of Exploring Our Sun – the 60-Year Odyssey to Parker Solar Probe

Wednesday 23 October 2019, 18:00 – 18:45
Location: The Walter E. Washington Convention Center – Grand Ballroom B

Parker Solar Probe is humankind’s first mission to venture to the Sun and unlock the mysteries of the corona. Launched in 2018, and built by JHUAPL for NASA, this mission is the culmination of a 60-year quest to build a spacecraft and instruments capable of exploring the searing temperatures and radiation of the corona, and investigate the processes that drive the solar wind. While a mission to the Sun has been a science priority since 1958, it was not a possibility until recently due to the extreme radiation environment close to the Sun. Parker and its instruments will come within 3.8 million miles (6.16 million kilometers) to the Sun, more than seven times closer than any spacecraft has come before. Initial data from the instruments has revealed previously unobserved processes in the near-solar region; highlights of the first major scientific findings will be presented at IAC.