Tag: Heliophysics
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Photos: Parker Solar Probe closed up inside Delta 4 fairing for launch
Ready for a journey into the sun’s enigmatic, scorching corona, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has been encapsulated inside the nose cone of its Delta 4-Heavy rocket for liftoff Saturday. These photos show the solar-powered probe’s enclosure inside the Delta 4 fairing at the Astrotech payload processing facility in Titusville, Florida, last month. Ground crews transported…
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Parker Solar Probe cleared for launch to ‘touch the sun’
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION Artist’s concept of Parker Solar Probe. Credit: JHUAPL NASA managers Thursday cleared the $1.5 billion Parker Solar Probe for launch early Saturday on a daring mission to “touch the sun,” repeatedly flying through its outer atmosphere to find out why the blazing corona is millions of degrees hotter…
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Solar probe moves into launch position at Cape Canaveral
EDITOR’S NOTE: Updated Aug. 1 with Tory Bruno comments on Delta 4-Heavy. Nestled inside the nose cone of its Delta 4-Heavy launcher, Parker Solar Probe departs its processing facility in Titusville, Florida. Credit: Ken Kremer / kenkremer.com / spaceupclose.com NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, fueled and buttoned up for liftoff Aug. 11 on the first mission…
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Launch of NASA’s Parker Solar Probe rescheduled for Aug. 6
Parker Solar Probe sits inside a clean room at the Astrotech spacecraft processing facility in Titusville, Florida. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Ed Whitman The launch of NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, on the verge of kicking off a seven-year mission culminating in passages through the sun’s atmosphere, has been delayed to Aug. 6 to resolve a technical…
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ULA’s heavy-lifter rolled out for solar probe launch
The Delta 4-Heavy rocket slated to launch NASA’s Parker Solar Probe was lifted vertical on its launch pad at Cape Canaveral on April 17, one day after it rolled to the pad from a nearby horizontal integration hangar. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Ed Whitman Gearing up for a predawn blastoff July 31, launch crews have positioned…
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Launch of NASA ionospheric probe delayed to examine rocket issue
The second and third stages of the Orbital ATK Pegasus XL rocket are offloaded from a transport vehicle at Building 1555 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California for the launch of NASA’s ICON satellite. Credit: NASA/Rodney Speed The launch of a NASA satellite to study the behavior of plasma in Earth’s ionosphere has been…
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Pioneering ESA mission aims to create artificial solar eclipses
Due to launch together in 2020, the two satellites making up Proba-3 will fly in precise formation to form an external coronagraph in space, one satellite eclipsing the sun to allow the second to study the otherwise invisible solar corona. Credit: ESA As skywatchers and scientists converge on a transcontinental band of totality for Monday’s…
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NASA unveils renamed solar probe
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS & USED WITH PERMISSION NASA’s first mission to go to the sun, the Parker Solar Probe, is named after Eugene Parker who first theorized that the sun constantly sends out a flow of particles and energy called the solar wind. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL A NASA spacecraft being readied for launch in 2018 will…
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Scientists say thinning atmosphere drove the drying and cooling of Mars
Artist’s concept of a solar storm hitting Mars and stripping ions from the upper atmosphere. Credit: NASA/GSFC Data collected by NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft in its first two years at Mars confirm suspicions that the solar wind is blasting away the planet’s atmosphere and helped transform the world from a warmer, wetter and potentially habitable world…
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Orbital ATK has no plans to phase out seldom-used Pegasus rocket
In this view from an F/A-18 chase plane, Orbital ATK’s Pegasus XL rocket fires its first stage seconds after dropping from the belly of an L-1011 carrier plane Dec. 15. Credit: NASA/Lori Losey The build-up of Orbital ATK’s next air-launched Pegasus XL rocket will start in the coming weeks at Vandenberg Air Force Base in…