NASA Plans to Visit the Sun June 10, 2008: For more than 400
years, astronomers have studied the sun from afar. Now NASA has
decided to go there. "We are going to visit a living, breathing
star for the first time," says program scientist Lika
Guhathakurta of NASA Headquarters. "This is an unexplored region
of the solar system and the possibilities for discovery are off
the charts." Right: An artist's concept of Solar Probe Plus.
[more] The name of the mission is Solar Probe+ (pronounced
"Solar Probe plus"). It's a heat-resistant spacecraft designed
to plunge deep into the sun's atmosphere where it can sample
solar wind and magnetism first hand. Launch could happen as
early as 2015. By the time the mission ends 7 years later,
planners believe Solar Probe+ will solve two great mysteries of
astrophysics and make many new discoveries along the way. Johns
Hopkins' Applied Physics Lab (APL) will design and build the
spacecraft for NASA. APL already has experience sending probes
toward the sun. APL's MESSENGER space