NASA · solar mission active
Parker Solar Probe
NASA's Parker Solar Probe dives through the Sun's outer atmosphere, closer than any spacecraft before, to explain the solar wind.
- Launch
- 12 August 2018
- Distance from Earth today
- 142.2 million km0.951 AU · light: 7 min 54 s
- Distance from the Sun today
- 100.6 million km0.673 AU
Live distance from Earth and chart →
Trajectory
Trajectory: JPL Horizons vectors (spacecraft -96) every 3 days, projected onto the ecliptic; compressed distance scale.
Mission timeline
- Launch on a Delta IV Heavy
- First Venus gravity assist
- First perihelion
- Seventh and final Venus flyby
- First record-close perihelion through the solar corona
Targets: Sun, Venus
About the mission
Parker Solar Probe is built to touch the Sun. Seven Venus flybys between 2018 and 2024 gradually shrank its orbit until, from December 2024, each perihelion takes it within about six million kilometres of the solar surface, deep inside the corona. A thick carbon heat shield keeps its instruments near room temperature while they sample the magnetic fields and particles that become the solar wind. At closest approach it is the fastest object ever built by humans, and it keeps looping around the Sun roughly every three months.