A NASA spacecraft will aim straight for the sun next year.
The space agency announced the red-hot mission on Wednesday, at the University of Chicago.
Watch the Facebook live from the University of Chicago to know full details on the solar mission.
Scheduled to launch in summer 2018, the Solar Probe Plus will fly within 4 million miles of the sun's surface – right into the solar atmosphere. It will be subjected to heat and radiation like no other man-made structure before.
The Solar Probe Plus was renamed to Parker Solar Probe in honor of astrophysicist Eugene Parker by NASA. The announcement came during a ceremony honoring astrophysicist Eugene Parker, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago.
The purpose of this mission is to study the sun's outer atmosphere and make critical observations on on how stars like ours work. “The resulting data will improve forecasts of major space weather events that impact life on Earth, as well as satellites and astronauts in space,” NASA’s official website said.
(With inputs from AP)
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