Eugene Parker – Pioneering Astrophysicist Who Discovered Solar Wind – Dies at 94
Prof. Emeritus Eugene N. Parker, a pioneering astrophysicist whose contributions to solar physics were so enormous that NASA named its Parker Solar Probe mission after…
Parker Solar Probe News
NASA Mourns Passing of Visionary Heliophysicist Eugene Parker – Namesake of Parker Solar Probe
Dr. Eugene N. Parker, visionary of heliophysics and namesake of NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, has passed away. He was 94. As a young professor at…
Powerful Telescopes Trained on Parker Solar Probe’s Latest Swing Around the Sun
As NASA’s Parker Solar Probe completes its latest swing around the Sun, it’s doing so in full view of dozens of other spacecraft and ground-based…
Parker Solar Probe Captures Stunning New Images of Venus – Faint Glow Detected From the Planet’s Surface
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has taken its first visible light images of the surface of Venus from space. Smothered in thick clouds, Venus’ surface is…
Spacecraft Enters the Sun’s Blistering Hot Corona for the First Time in History
An instrument made by scientists and engineers at the Center for Astrophysics has helped verify that — for the first time in history — a…
Parker Solar Probe: For the First Time in History, a Spacecraft Has Touched the Sun
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has now done what no spacecraft has done before—it has officially touched the Sun. Launched in 2018 to study the Sun’s…
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Touches the Sun for the First Time – Bringing New Discoveries
For the first time in history, a spacecraft has touched the Sun. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has now flown through the Sun’s upper atmosphere –…
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Completes a Record-Setting Swing by the Sun
Blazing along at space-record speeds that would get it from Earth to the Moon in under an hour, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe completed its 10th…
Hypervelocity Dust Impacts on a Spacecraft Produce Plasma Explosions and Debris Clouds
New results reveal how plasma explosions and clouds of debris can disturb spacecraft operations in the aftermath of hypervelocity dust impacts. The Parker Solar Probe…
A “Living Catalog” of Solar Stream Interactions
When a fast solar wind stream erupts from a coronal hole (a cooler region in the Sun’s atmosphere) and overtakes a slower moving solar wind…
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Discovers Radio Signal in Venus’ Atmosphere
During a brief swing by Venus, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe detected a natural radio signal that revealed the spacecraft had flown through the planet’s upper…
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Delivers 1st Complete View of Venus’ Orbital Dust Ring
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe mission has given scientists the first complete look at Venus’ orbital dust ring, a collection of microscopic dust particles that circulates…
Switchbacks Science: Explaining NASA’s Parker Solar Probe’s Mysterious Magnetic Puzzle
When NASA’s Parker Solar Probe sent back the first observations from its voyage to the Sun, scientists found signs of a wild ocean of currents…
Celestial Geometry Posed a Special Opportunity During Parker Solar Probe’s 7th Solar Encounter
During Parker Solar Probe’s seventh swing by the Sun, culminating in its closest solar approach, or perihelion, on January 17, 2021, celestial geometry posed a…
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Captures Stunning View of Venus
NASA’s Parker Solar Probe captured stunning views of Venus during its close flyby of the planet in July 2020. Though Parker Solar Probe’s focus is…
Two Spacecraft Designed to Study the Sun Also Got Some Recent Peeks at Earth and Other Planets
Looking Around the Neighborhood Though they focus on the star at the center of our solar system, some Sun-watching spacecraft recently captured unique views of…
A New View of Small Sun Structures Allows NASA to Explore the Solar Wind Like Never Before
Scientists have combined NASA data and cutting-edge image processing to gain new insight into the solar structures that create the Sun’s flow of high-speed solar…
A Small, Bright Surprise: Two Views of a Sungrazing Comet
When scientists downlinked data from Parker Solar Probe’s sixth orbit, there was a small, bright surprise waiting for them: the spacecraft’s first observation of a…
