00:00you
00:30That's right. So NASA's Parker Solar Probe, which launched in 2018, has been using Venus
00:40Gravity Assist to get closer and closer to the sun. And most recently, it had a Venus
00:45Gravity Assist, and so now it's going to fly within 3.83 million miles of the surface
00:50of the sun, which is closer than any human-made object has ever gone before.
01:00We have never had a human-made object so close to the sun. To get that close, we had to use
01:15Venus to have our gravity assist to slow Parker down so that it could get that close. Also,
01:21we had to not melt. That's why Parker has this heat shield that holds the instruments
01:26at room temperature and keeps the heat of the sun away. And these are just amazing feats,
01:31and so it's so amazing that we are so close and really getting to measure in detail this
01:36material up close.
01:56We're here at solar maximum, which is the time that the sun is the most dynamic and
02:17it has explosions all the time, these huge coronal mass ejections and solar flares. And
02:23those are the biggest, most energetic explosions in our solar system and actually larger than
02:29the entire planet Earth. They're really just some unbelievable things to observe. And so
02:37by passing this close to the sun, we're able to observe these explosions close up and instead
02:43of having them get all stirred up and blurred by the time they reach the earth, we're getting
02:49to see the pristine processes happening right up close to their origin.
02:5410, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0. Liftoff of the mighty Delta IV Heavy Rocket with NASA's
03:13Parker Solar Probe. A daring mission to shed light on the mysteries of our closest star,
03:19the sun.
03:20Three RS-68s look good in the full thrust mode. Booster is throttling down to the partial
03:31thrust mode. One minute, 45 seconds into flight.
03:44NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
03:46California Institute of Technology
Comments