The Parker Solar Probe

August 11, 2018 5:41 PM

It’s Easier to Leave the Solar System Than to Reach the Sun. The center of the solar system is a tricky destination, but NASA is going.

A Place In The Sun: NASA’s Parker Probe will venture closer than ever to the sun to explore its mysterious atmosphere (Science Magazine)

Behind the Scenes With the Spacecraft That Will Soar Through the Sun’s Atmosphere (Smithsonian Magazine)

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Is Named for Him. 60 Years Ago, No One Believed His Ideas About the Sun. Eugene N. Parker predicted the existence of solar wind in 1958. The NASA spacecraft is the first named for a living person. (NY Times)

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe and the Curious Case of the Hot Corona (NASA)

Official Parker Solar Probe sites from NASA and The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

Liftoff is currently scheduled for Sunday, Aug 12 at 3:31am EDT. Watch it live on the Official Stream of NASA TV.

posted by peeedro (34 comments total)

Liftoff is currently scheduled for Sunday, Aug 12 at 3:31am EDT.

now how the hell do they ever expect it to get to the sun when they're launching it at night?

dumbasses
posted by pyramid termite at 6:27 PM on August 11, 2018 [81 favorites]

Liftoff is currently scheduled for Sunday, Aug 12 at 3:31am EDT.

now how the hell do they ever expect it to get to the sun when they're launching it at night?

It totally takes like more than 3 hours to get to the sun, so it'll be around sunrise when it gets there. You get the best data from a fresh morning sun. Duh.
posted by tclark at 6:38 PM on August 11, 2018 [18 favorites]

Obligatory.

Tangential.

Awesome post. Thank you, peeedro.
posted by Barack Spinoza at 6:40 PM on August 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

This is clearly a dry run for when we need to launch a nuclear missile into the sun in order to restart it.
posted by bassooner at 6:43 PM on August 11, 2018 [7 favorites]

“Ladies and gentlemen....Mercury.”
posted by Fizz at 6:44 PM on August 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

and we will all suffer as it extinguishes our planet.
posted by odinsdream

Username checks out.

(Heliosterical?)
posted by Celsius1414 at 6:54 PM on August 11, 2018 [14 favorites]

What you have there is a Disaster Area stunt ship for a dive into the sun.
posted by w0mbat at 6:59 PM on August 11, 2018 [14 favorites]

A bit of a tangent, but I saw an F-117 stealth at an airshow once. "Your eyes just slide off it" is a pretty good description of how it looked. So flat black and angular it was downright uncanny.
posted by traveler_ at 7:01 PM on August 11, 2018 [6 favorites]

The trick is to throw it at the sun and miss.
posted by ckape at 7:51 PM on August 11, 2018 [9 favorites]

So the plan is to blow it up, right?
posted by Fizz at 8:22 PM on August 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

They will race behind you, they will stumble, they will fall. But in time they will join you in the sun.
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 8:23 PM on August 11, 2018

I'm so used to rage-bait articles on the web with titles like "It's harder to buy diapers than it is to buy guns" or "It's easier to replace all your employees with slave labor than it is to provide 3 months of maternity leave" that when I first read the title, I was like, "OK, but why is someone complaining about that? Who cares?!"
posted by Saxon Kane at 8:29 PM on August 11, 2018 [3 favorites]

Really interesting! Totally off topic question for Chinese speaker:

...says Yanping Guo, the mission-design and navigation manager.... Guo has been working on the probe for about 17 years.

Is this correct usage? I have a Chinese name, Wang Jian Guo. My understanding is that "Wang" is my family name, and "Jian Guo" my personal names, but that you would call me "Jian" or "Jian Guo". And that if you wanted to splice, the natural splice would be Wang Jianguo.

So am I right, or is the journalist, or something I am missing here? Maybe the journalist Westernised his name order, he is actually Guo Yanping? But surely Yan is the family name?
posted by Meatbomb at 8:34 PM on August 11, 2018

ONLY ONE CAGE REMAINS

In my defence I actually own, wear and love this T-shirt, so this is less lazy-memeing and more, umm, personally involved lazy memeing? (fwiw, that's not an affiliate link, standard disclaimers apply, I did not design the tshirt, millions now living may never die).
posted by I'm always feeling, Blue at 8:38 PM on August 11, 2018 [2 favorites]

I wonder if they'll study Venus while they're at it.
posted by oddman at 8:57 PM on August 11, 2018

Meatbomb, Guo's name is just in Western order. It could be a journalistic choice, but it might be her own (it's pretty common with Chinese people outside China).

(BTW I looked up the name and Guo is a woman.)
posted by airmail at 9:52 PM on August 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

Liftoff is currently scheduled for Sunday, Aug 12 at 3:31am EDT.


Great. I have to stay up another several hours to see the children crying and banners flying all around the chosen one.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:58 PM on August 11, 2018 [2 favorites]

I am driving there for the second night in a row, hopeful to see the launch. The brother in law worked on the PSP and is in one of the LC rooms.
posted by X-Himy at 10:07 PM on August 11, 2018 [3 favorites]

Launch in 1:30! NASA is taking questions on their livestream right now. One woman from NASA was answering a question about the ultimate fate of the probe, and she said (paraphrased):

After the engines shut off, it will no longer be able to correct its trajectory. Parts of the craft that were not intended for the solar environment will start to be exposed, and the craft will start to break apart, first into larger pieces and then smaller and smaller ones. Romantically, I like to think it will become part of the corona, orbiting the sun forever."

I really needed this after spending two hours reading about politics. Go NASA!
posted by mmoncur at 10:36 PM on August 11, 2018 [3 favorites]

Now she's answering questions about The Carrington Event and possible future solar storms. Man, it's nice to see a press conference where reporters are asking smart questions and getting smart answers.
posted by mmoncur at 10:39 PM on August 11, 2018 [1 favorite]

Correction: The press conference I'm watching is pre-recorded before the original mission date of August 6th.

Also, the NASA person I quoted above was Dr. Nicola Fox of John Hopkins / APL, who I believe led the team that developed the probe. Here she is on TED talking about it.
posted by mmoncur at 10:58 PM on August 11, 2018

Yay, successful launch and 3rd stage separation!
posted by mmoncur at 1:21 AM on August 12, 2018 [3 favorites]

Of course it’s easier to leave the Solar System than reach the Sun. Zeno taught us this — when you are leaving the Solar System, you set out for, say, Andromeda, and, when you get half way there, you are definitely out of the Solar System. But you’ll never get to the Sun, only fractionally approach it. Unless, of course, Helios loans you his chariot, and, considering how that turned out last time, good luck.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:54 AM on August 12, 2018 [8 favorites]

now how the hell do they ever expect it to get to the sun when they're launching it at night?
dumbasses

Was...was that a presidential tweet? Please tell me it wasn't a tweet. It's so hard to tell anymore.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:54 AM on August 12, 2018

Of course it’s easier to leave the Solar System than reach the Sun. Zeno taught us this —

I read this as "Xenu taught us this--" and it took me a few seconds to recalibrate.
posted by acrasis at 6:57 AM on August 12, 2018 [4 favorites]

Bradbury: “like a snowflake into the lap of June, warm July, and the sweltering dog-mad days of August.”
posted by doctornemo at 8:21 AM on August 12, 2018

Video of successful lift off from Kennedy Space Center.

Something I should have put in the FPP: the mission includes a memory card of names submitted by 1,137,202 people who wanted to ride along to the sun with William Shatner.
posted by peeedro at 10:23 AM on August 12, 2018 [2 favorites]

Man, at its closest approach, more than four Suns would fit between the probe and the Sun's surface, so from the probe's point of view the angular diameter of the Sun would be roughly the same as your fist with your arm extended fully. And even at that distance it needs all that shielding, when the source of energy at the Sun's core has about the same output per unit volume as a compost heap. (Of course it's a very big compost heap.)
posted by mubba at 11:19 AM on August 12, 2018 [3 favorites]

I'm not sure I would've been as fascinated by this without Sunshine, which is an absurdly-premised and disappointingly-ended movie that has about an hour of some of the best sci-fi filmmaking of all time. If you haven't watched it, do... even if it's for different reasons, it gives you a visceral feeling that it's Hard to go to the sun.
posted by Riki tiki at 11:25 AM on August 12, 2018 [2 favorites]

Well duh serial killer stowaways make it hard to get to the sun. I hope NASA's serial killer screens have gotten better.
posted by benzenedream at 12:42 PM on August 12, 2018

This is impressive but later stages of Osmos might be harder I think [maybe not but I've never finished it, it's so damn hard].
posted by unliteral at 5:31 PM on August 12, 2018

The trick is to throw it at the sun and miss.

As the first article makes clear, if you throw something at the sun you will miss.
posted by runcibleshaw at 7:58 PM on August 12, 2018 [2 favorites]

I love how, for all its brilliant engineering, the Parker probe - at least in its earthly form- looks like a crushed car.
posted by rongorongo at 3:50 AM on August 13, 2018

Thanks, I'm always feeling, Blue, I've ordered one for my college buddy who worked on the Parker Probe (and MESSENGER before that).
posted by whuppy at 11:00 AM on August 15, 2018