50 years ago, scientists were gearing up to hurl a probe at the sun

The Helios mission provided key insights into the sun. Now, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has taken up the mantle, giving scientists unprecedented views of the star.

Jul 9, 2024 - 01:30

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50 years ago, scientists were gearing up to hurl a probe at the sun

Excerpt from the July 6, 1974 field of Science News

An illustration of the NASA Parker Solar Probe getting good-nigh about the sun

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe (bigger true on this illustration) is the first spacecraft to have touched the sun’s corona (wavy red grid) and lived to notify the story.

Ben Smith/NASA, JHUAPL

Inserting the heat to Helios — Science News, July 6, 1974
Helios, an region probe scheduled to head towards the sun than any assorted artifical object ever launched, has comparatively simply survived a ground scan that exposed it to temperatures believed to be as serious as any it will possibly face all with the toughen of its mission…. At some stage in the scan, components of the spacecraft reached — and survived — temperatures up to seven-hundred tiers F. Helios, to be launched in [December], will transfer inside of 28 million miles of the sun.