Send Your Name to Touch the Sun on NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Launching Summer 2018

Illustration of the Parker Solar Probe spacecraft approaching the Sun.  Credits: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

Ken Kremer  --   SpaceUpClose.com  --   9 Mar 2018

CAPE CANAVERAL, FL – NASA is inviting the public from all across the world to send their names to touch the sun on the agencies groundbreaking Parker Solar Probe mission launching in summer 2018.

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe will fly ‘Where no Earth probe has gone before!’

Parker will directly into the Sun's atmosphere to within about 4 million miles from the surface of our stars unbearable scorching surface and that keeps us all alive.

“The mission will travel through the Sun’s atmosphere, facing brutal heat and radiation conditions — and your name will go along for the ride,” says NASA.

A state-of-the-art 4.5-inch-thick carbon-composite shield will protect Parker from beyond blow torch temperatures reaching nearly 2,500 F as it studies the sun with a suite of four science instruments.

Your opportunity to sign up for this ‘Hot Ticket’ and have your name placed on a microchip installed on Parker is available only for the next few weeks.

This limited time offer from NASA can be found at this link:   

http://go.nasa.gov/HotTicket

The deadline to submit your name is April 27, 2018.

After submitting and confirming your name, you can even print your very cool looking boiling ‘Hot Ticket.’  Be aware that it might take a few hours to get your confirmation email. Klingon agents are scouting about on high alert.

Send your name to the Sun, via a microchip installed on NASA's upcoming Parker Solar Probe mission. Submissions will be accepted until April 27, 2018.  Credits: NASA

Take it from Star Trek’s Captain Kirk (William Shatner) personally inviting you to ride along in this short video invitation:

Video Caption: Star Trek’s William Shatner, on behalf of NASA, invites you to send your name where it’s never gone before: the Sun, by way of NASA’s Parker Solar Probe.  Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Rich Melnick

Kirk’s name and mine are already onboard!

Will you join us for this one time only scorching experience?

“The primary science goals for the mission are to trace how energy and heat move through the solar corona and to explore what accelerates the solar wind as well as solar energetic particles. The mission will revolutionize our understanding of the Sun, where changing conditions can spread out into the solar system, affecting Earth and other worlds,” says NASA.

NASA’s Parker Solar Probe will launch on a United Launch Alliance triple barrel Delta IV Heavy rocket in August 2018

In May 2017, NASA renamed the spacecraft from the Solar Probe Plus to

The Parker Solar Probe is named in honor of astrophysicist Eugene Parker, S. Chandrasekhar Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago.

It was previously known as Solar Probe Plus.

This was the first time NASA named a spacecraft for a living individual.

“This probe will journey to a region humanity has never explored before,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This mission will answer questions scientists have sought to uncover for more than six decades.”

Watch for Ken’s continuing onsite coverage of NASA, SpaceX, ULA, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Orbital ATK and more space and mission reports direct from the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.

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