Credit NASA — The Parker Solar Probe spacecraft consists of 11 separate systems, each with their own total mass in kilograms.
The Parker Solar Probe (abbreviated PSP; previously Solar Probe, Solar Probe Plus or Solar Probe+) is a NASA robotic spacecraft launched in 2018, with the mission of repeatedly probing and making observations of the outer corona of the Sun. It will approach to within 9.86 solar radii (6.9 million km or 4.3 million miles) from the center of the Sun and by 2025 will travel, at closest approach, as fast as 690,000 km/h (430,000 mph), or 0.064% the speed of light.
The project was announced in the fiscal 2009 budget year. The cost of the project is US$1.5 billion. Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory designed and built the spacecraft, which was launched on August 12, 2018. It became the first NASA spacecraft named after a living person, honoring physicist Eugene Newman Parker, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago.
A memory card containing the names of over 1.1 million people was mounted on a plaque and installed below the spacecraft’s high-gain antenna on May 18, 2018. The card also contains photos of Parker and a copy of his 1958 scientific paper predicting important aspects of solar physics.
Credit — NASA — The Parker Solar Probe (abbreviated PSP; previously Solar Probe, Solar Probe Plus or Solar Probe+) is a NASA robotic spacecraft launched in 2018, with the mission of repeatedly probing and making observations of the outer corona of the Sun.
