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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A NASA spacecraft will aim straight for the sun next year.
The space agency announced the red-hot mission Wednesday at the University of Chicago.
Scheduled to launch in summer 2018, the Solar Probe Plus will fly within 4 million miles of the sun's surface — right into the solar atmosphere. It will be subjected to brutal heat and radiation like no other man-made structure before.
The purpose is to study the sun's outer atmosphere and better understand how stars like ours work.
We've renamed our first mission to touch the sun as the Parker Solar Probe in honor of astrophysicist Eugene Parker: https://t.co/gpF1eqloidpic.twitter.com/F1KgjJLaO0
— NASA (@NASA) May 31, 2017
The announcement came during a ceremony honoring astrophysicist Eugene Parker, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago.
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