NASA's Parker Solar Probe Exceeding an Exploration Vision

Designs for a "Solar Probe" started coming together in 1962, just four years after the National Research Council's Space Studies Board first proposed a mission to explore the environment near the Sun. But the technology to pull off such a bold endeavor, especially the material ingredients for an effective heat shield, just wasn't available - yet. After five years of flying through the ho​ttest and dustiest swaths of the inner solar system, Parker Solar Probe - which in 2021 became the first spacecraft to "touch the Sun" - isn't just surviving, it's thriving. jhuapl.link/xpd
(Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Mike Yakovlev)