- Start
- Jul 31, 201890% CONFIDENCEfrom the source
- End
- Aug 20, 201890% CONFIDENCEfrom the source
NASA's Groundbreaking Mission to 'Touch' the Sun Will Launch in 2018
- The links date the launch differently:[1] (from May 2017) says the mission launches "in the summer of next year", with a 20-day window opening July 31, 2018, while the newer NASA page[3], dated Aug 10, 2018, gives a firm slot - "slated to launch on Saturday, August 11, 2018, at 3:33 a.m. EDT from Launch Complex 37, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida"; the pin's 31 July to 21 August span is the window, not the launch[1][3]
- The launch vehicle is a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy; NASA's image feature shows the spacecraft "packed safely inside" its payload fairing, photographed on Wednesday, August 8, 2018[3]
- It is NASA's first mission to fly directly into the Sun's corona, plunging within 4 million miles of the Sun and travelling "through the Sun's atmosphere, closer to the surface than any spacecraft before it"[1][3]
- A core goal is to explain why the corona is much hotter than the surface; NASA says the mission "will revolutionize our understanding of the Sun, where changing conditions can propagate out into the solar system, affecting Earth and other worlds"[1][3]
- The spacecraft carries a 4.5-inch-thick (11.43 cm) carbon-composite shield and will make 24 orbits with many hot and cold cycles[1]
- On May 31, 2017 NASA renamed Solar Probe Plus the Parker Solar Probe, at an announcement at the University of Chicago, honouring solar astrophysicist Dr. Eugene Parker, whose 1958 Astrophysical Journal article "Dynamics of the interplanetary gas and magnetic fields" underpinned the concept of solar wind; the team placed photos of Parker and his paper inside the spacecraft[1]
- Understanding the corona should help forecast space weather affecting satellite communications, aircraft radiation exposure, astronaut safety and pipeline erosion[1]
- Project scientist Nicola Fox of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory said the probe "is going to answer questions about solar physics that we've puzzled over for more than six decades"; Parker himself said "the solar probe is going to a region of space that has never been explored before"[1]
References 386% CONFIDENCE
The first entry is always the pin's source. Overall confidence is a weighted average of how firmly each reference supports the start and end times used above; a reference counts half as much for every 180 days older than the newest.
- [1]90%interestingengineering.com/nasas-groundbreaking-mission-touch-the-sun-launch-2018interestingengineering.com· Posted Jun 19, 2017· Starts Jul 31, 2018 ✓· Ends Aug 20, 2018 ✓· 9% of score
Happened as dated, per interestingengineering.com: "…reaking Mission to ‘Touch’ the Sun Will Launch in 2018 NASA[3] has just announced that the Solar Probe…"
- [2]83%Parker Solar Probe Launches on NASA Voyage to Touch the Sunnytimes.com· Published Aug 12, 2018· 46% of score
The New York Times' own headline and 12 August 2018 dateline report the Parker Solar Probe launching on its mission to the Sun, independently corroborating NASA's[3] stated launch date within the pin's stored window, though the page itself could not be fetched directly (nytimes.com is blocked).
- [3]88%Parker Solar Probe Ready for Launch on Mission to the Sunnasa.gov· Published Aug 10, 2018· 45% of score
NASA's own page states the Parker Solar Probe was scheduled to launch 11 August 2018 at 3:33 a.m. EDT from Cape Canaveral, squarely inside the pin's stored 31 July-21 August window.
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