NASA's Parker Solar Probe has blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, embarking on a seven-year mission to examine the sun's atmosphere. A last-minute glitch on Saturday postponed the launch by 24 hours.
Image: Official Stream of NASA TV
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NASA's Parker Solar Probe blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Sunday, marking the start of a historic mission towards the sun.
The spacecraft, about the size of a small car, is set to travel directly through the sun's atmosphere, making it the first probe to reach the sun's corona where temperatures exceed a million degrees Fahrenheit (555,000 degrees Celsius).
The probe was finally launched on top of a Delta IV Heavy rocket into the night sky at 3:31 am local time (07:31 UTC), after a last-minute technical glitch postponed the launch by 24 hours.
NASA has billed its latest mission as the first spacecraft to "touch the sun," although in reality will come to within 6 million kilometers (3.8 million miles) from the sun's surface. The distance between Earth and the sun is 93 million miles, meaning the Parker probe will get to within 4 percent of that distance.
The mission is expected to cost some $1.5 billion (€1.3 billion).
Uncovering mysteries of the sun, mitigating threats
NASA scientists hope the unmanned probe will allow them to explore the sun and unveil the mysteries of dangerous solar storms in a way never before possible.
The sun's solar winds and its corona, which is 300 times hotter than its surface, have the potential to wreak havoc on Earth by knocking out energy grids and wiping out power to millions of people.
"The Parker Solar Probe will help us do a much better job of predicting when a disturbance in the solar wind could hit Earth," said Justin Kasper, a project scientist and professor at the University of Michigan in the US.
Scientists also say that a deeper understanding of solar storms will help protect future deep space astronauts when they journey towards the moon or Mars.
For the 60th anniversary of the creation of NASA, DW brings you a selection of moments that left their mark on the famed space agency.
Image: AP/DW
Explorer 1 — older than NASA
The Soviet Union launched its Sputnik satellite in 1957, beating US to the punch and prompting fears of Soviet dominance in space. In January of the next year, the US army responded by sending up the Explorer 1 satellite (pictured above). And on July 29, 1958, the US Congress approved the creation of the National Aeronautics and Space Agency, or NASA. The agency opened its doors on October 1.
Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Men on the moon
NASA managed to land humans on the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969, just 11 years after the association's foundation. The feat was accomplished using less computing power than that possessed by the modern-day smartphone. The photo shows Neil Armstrong and Erwin Aldrin planting the US flag on the lunar surface.
On April 14, 1970, an oxygen tank on the Apollo 13 spacecraft exploded, prompting astronaut James Lovell (center) to report back to NASA base in Texas: "Houston, we've had a problem." The crew made it back to Earth after a risky repair operation. Lovell's phrase, slightly misquoted, was made famous by a 1995 movie, Apollo 13.
The Challenger Space Shuttle was not as fortunate as Apollo 13. It exploded, killing all seven people on board, just minutes after takeoff on January 28, 1986. Famed physicist Richard Feynman eventually determined that the crash was caused by a rubber seal ring that failed in unusually cold temperatures.
Image: picture alliance/AP Photo/B. Weaver
Burying the hatchet
The Cold War rivalries between Russian and American scientists were finally buried on December 14, 1998, when the US-built Unity module and the Russian-made Zarya module docked in space. The two modules form the basis of what we now know as the International Space Station (ISS).
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/NASA
NASA's Curiosity is scouting ahead for us
On August 6, 2012, NASA landed the Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars. The mobile laboratory is still sending scientific findings, selfies and even tweets from Mars, albeit with a little help from its Earth-based handlers. Curiosity's data is crucial for NASA's next mission: landing humans on Mars some time in the 2030s.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS
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Built to withstand solar radiation
The probe is armed with high-powered carbon heat shield that is 11.43 centimeters (4.5 inches) thick. The shield is also built to sustain solar radiation levels 500 times greater than those that reach Earth, while maintaining a relatively cool temperature inside of just 85 degrees Fahrenheit.
The Parker Solar Probe is expected to pass through the sun's corona 24 times over the next seven years.
"The sun is full of mysteries," said Nicky Fox, project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab. "We are ready. We have the perfect payload. We know the questions we want to answer."
Set to break records
The Parker Solar Probe is set to break several NASA records over the course of its seven-year mission.
By this fall, on the probe's very first brush with the sun, it will already come to within 15.5 million miles from the sun's surface, easily beating the current record set by NASA's Helios 2 spacecraft in 1976.
Once it reaches its 22nd orbit around the sun, the Parker probe will be travelling at a record-breaking 430,000 miles per hour — faster than anything from Planet Earth has ever traveled before.
Among the thousands of people gathered at Cape Canaveral to witness the historic launch was 91-year-old Eugene Parker, after whom the spacecraft is named. Parker was the first person to propose the existence of solar winds back in 1958.
"I'm just waiting for the data now," Parker said in a NASA broadcast after the launch. "There will be a lot of data coming in. All I can say is 'Wow, here we go!'"
Natural disasters as seen from outer space
How do satellites see the Earth? And what do they find out about what's happening down here? Check out these impressive photos of natural disasters to discover for yourself.
Image: NASA
Only tears of sand remain
Earth observation satellites such as the European Space Agency's Proba-V collect daily images that allow for the tracking of environmental changes over time. The images above - taken in April 2014, July 2015 and January 2016 (left to right) - offer crystal-clear insight into the gradual evaporation of Lake Poopo, once Bolivia's second largest lake - due at least in part to climate change.
Image: ESA/Belspo
The beast has awoken
No matter how long volcanoes sleep, they're always in a bad mood when they wake up. The International Space Station was passing overhead when the Sarychev volcano, located in the Kuril Islands of Russia, erupted in 2009. Astronauts were able to snap a picture through a hole in the clouds. From dense ash to clouds of condensed water, virtually all natural phenomena can be examined from outer space.
Image: NASA
Don't play with fire
Every year, wildfires devastate the landscape - and ecology - in numerous countries around the world. Too often, these are caused by humans. This was also the case in Indonesia, where farmers burned peat rainforest areas for agriculture. On the island of Borneo and Sumatra, satellites detected fire hot spots in September 2015, and the plume of grey smoke that triggered air quality alerts.
Image: NASA/J. Schmaltz
German kids misbehaved
In Germany, parents warn their children that if they don't finish their meals, it's going to rain. And indeed, in 2013 it rained, so much that some of central Europe's major rivers overflowed their banks. As shown in this image from 2013, the Elbe burst its banks following unprecedented rainfall. In the photo, muddy water covers the area around Wittenberg, in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt.
Image: NASA/J. Allen
At the eye of the hurricane
A strong storm can cause irreparable damage through intense winds and storm surges from the sea. Space-based information is crucial in following development of such storms: intensity, the direction it's moving, wind speed … in the eastern Pacific Ocean near Mexico, this satellite image helped determine how tropical storm Sandra reached winds of 160 kilometers per hour by November 25, 2015.
Image: NASA/J. Schmaltz
Melting away from under us
Satellites also play a key role in monitoring climate change and, inevitably, the process of melting ice. From space, scientists were able to document how several glaciers around the globe have receded - as well as the subsequent rise in sea level. This photograph, taken from the International Space Station, shows the retreat of the Upsala glacier in Argentine Patagonia from 2002 to 2013.
Image: NASA
Hold your breath!
Dust often covers remote deserts - however, in September 2015, satellites offered this impressive view of Middle East areas enveloped by a dust storm, or haboob, affecting large populated regions. What satellites can observe from space supports air quality sensors on the ground to understand patterns on how the storms start and develop. These findings can improve forecasting methods.
Image: NASA/J. Schmaltz
'Naked mountain'
These are the words NASA used to describe the lack of snow on California's Mount Shasta, a crucial source of water for the region. Images documenting drought over the past years have consistently been showing brown mountains that should be white, and bare earth where people seek water. As ice melts, drought grows.
