NASA's solar probe sails through Venus on the way to the sun

On Wednesday, NASA's Solar Parker solar probe flew over Venus for gravitational assistance, a maneuver that will push the spacecraft into its unprecedented journey into the sun. Overall, the probe will use the gravity of Venus seven times during the mission to progressively approach the Sun.

Launched in August 2018, NASA's Parker Probe is humanity's first mission to the sun. The mission is named after the solar astrophysicist Eugene Parker and will travel closer to the sun than any other spaceship in history. It will fly directly into the atmosphere of our sun at 4 million kilometers from the surface of the star. The objective of the mission is to explore the outer atmosphere of the sun or the solar corona and to understand the physical mechanisms that accelerate the solar wind and energetic particles. The resulting data will improve predictions of dangerous space weather events impacting life on Earth and disrupting satellites in space.

To perform these unprecedented investigations, the spaceship embeds four suites of instruments. These instruments are designed to measure the magnetic field of the sun, plasma and sun particles, as well as to capture images of the solar wind and the environment around the spacecraft. Since the probe will scan materials with a temperature greater than one million degrees Fahrenheit, the probe is also equipped with a heat shield specifically designed for this purpose. The ultramodern thermal shield will keep the spacecraft and its instruments safe and protect them from unprecedented levels of radiation and heat.

The spacecraft will reach speeds of up to 430,000 miles per hour as it travels through space. It's fast enough to go from Philadelphia to Washington, DC in less than a minute. During this seven-year mission, Parker Solar Probe will perform 24 sun orbits and will get closer and closer to the sun in each orbit. But approaching so close to the Sun and adjusting the path require a slowdown, for which Parker will use the gravity of our neighboring planet, Venus.