what is parker solar probe

Parker solar Probe

                                                               (By Rahul Kumar Jha) 

Parker Solar Probe (previously Solar Probe, Solar Probe Plus, or Solar Probe+, abbreviated PSP)^[8]is a NASA robotic spacecraft launched in 2018, with the mission of repeatedly probing and making observations of the outer corona of the Sun.^[3][9][6] It will approach to within 9.86 solar radii (6.9 million kilometers or 4.3 million miles)^[10][11] from the center of the Sun and by 2025 will travel, at closest approach, as fast as 690,000 km/h (430,000 mph), or 0.064% the speed of light.^[10][12]

The project was announced in the fiscal 2009 budget year. The cost of the project is US$1.5 billion. Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory designed and built the spacecraft,^[13] which was launched on August 12, 2018.^[2] It became the first NASA spacecraft named after a living person, honoring physicist Eugene Parker, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago.^[14]

A memory card containing the names of over 1.1 million people was mounted on a plaque and installed below the spacecraft's high-gain antenna on May 18, 2018.^[15] The card also contains photos of Parker and a copy of his 1958 scientific paper predicting important aspects of solar physics.^[16]

On 29 October 2018 at about 1:04 p.m. EDT, the spacecraft became the closest ever artificial object to the Sun. The previous record, 26.55 million miles from the Sun's surface, was set by the Helios 2spacecra