NASA begins countdown to launch of first spacecraft to 'touch Sun'

August 11, 2018 00:13

NASA counted down Friday to the launch of a $1.5 billion spacecraft that aims to plunge into the Suns sizzling atmosphere and become humanitys first mission to explore a star.

The car-sized Parker Solar Probe is scheduled to blast off on a Delta IV Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida early Saturday.

The 65-minute launch window opens at 3:33 am and the weather forecast is 70 percent favourable for takeoff, NASA said.

The probes main goal is to unveil the secrets of the corona, the unusual atmosphere around Sun.

Not only is the corona about 300 times hotter than the Suns surface, it also hurls powerful plasma and energetic particles that can unleash geomagnetic space storms and disrupt Earths power grid.

The Parker Solar Probe will help us do a much better job of predicting when a disturbance in the solar wind could hit Earth, said Justin Kasper, one of the project scientists and a professor at the University of Michigan.

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