Parker Solar Probe will swoop to within 4 million miles of the sun's surface,
facing heat and radiation like no spacecraft before it. Launching in 2018, Parker
Solar Probe will provide new data on solar activity and make critical contributions to our
ability to forecast major space-weather events that impact life on Earth.
The mission is named for physicist Eugene Parker, who first theorized the existence of the solar wind and the complex interactions involving plasmas, magnetic fields, and energetic particles involved in 1958. He is the first living person to have a NASA spacecraft named after him.