Ken Kremer -- SpaceUpClose.com -- 13 August 2018
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – NASA’s daring Parker Solar Probe mission slated to fly at never before attained speeds through the hellish atmosphere of our Sun’s corona for the first time in human history, began with a dazzling middle-of-the-night blastoff of the mighty Delta IV Heavy rocket in the wee hours of Sunday morning, Aug. 12 – and delivered the car sized spacecraft to start her 7 year journey of science and discovery to elucidate our origins billions of years ago.
The 23-story tall triple barreled United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket successfully launched at 3:31 a.m. EDT Aug. 12 from the Florida Space Coast and put on a brilliant display of fire power with 2.1 million pounds of thrust spewing forth from the trio of liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen RS-68A main engines that quickly turned night into day a few hours before Sundays natural sunrise under nearly cloud-free skies.
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL – NASA’s daring Parker Solar Probe mission slated to fly at never before attained speeds through the hellish atmosphere of our Sun’s corona for the first time in human history, began with a dazzling middle-of-the-night blastoff of the mighty Delta IV Heavy rocket in the wee hours of Sunday morning, Aug. 12 – and delivered the car sized spacecraft to start her 7 year journey of science and discovery to elucidate our origins billions of years ago.
The 23-story tall triple barreled United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket successfully launched at 3:31 a.m. EDT Aug. 12 from the Florida Space Coast and put on a brilliant display of fire power with 2.1 million pounds of thrust spewing forth from the trio of liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen RS-68A main engines that quickly turned night into day a few hours before Sundays natural sunrise under nearly cloud-free skies.
Check out our Space UpClose gallery of photos
and videos. Click back again as the gallery of imagery grows. Plus my BBC TV World News prelaunch interview.
Credit: Julian Leek
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Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com/spaceupclose.com
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Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com/spaceupclose.com
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Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com/spaceupclose.com
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The three stage rocket delivered NASA’s Parker
spacecraft to its intended trajectory toward a swing by of the planet Venus in
October that will drive the spacecraft towards its first solar perihelion encounter
in November 2018 at a solar distance of merely 15 million miles - half the
previous record.
Parker is on a historic mission to soar through the sun’s outer atmosphere -- the solar corona – skimming within 4 million miles, 8.86 solar radii (6.2 million kilometers) of the suns fiercely hot surface where it will encounter brutally hot conditions reaching into the millions of degrees and repeatedly experience extremely intense and deadly radiation environments.
Parker is on a historic mission to soar through the sun’s outer atmosphere -- the solar corona – skimming within 4 million miles, 8.86 solar radii (6.2 million kilometers) of the suns fiercely hot surface where it will encounter brutally hot conditions reaching into the millions of degrees and repeatedly experience extremely intense and deadly radiation environments.
Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com/spaceupclose.com
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Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com/spaceupclose.com
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Here’s my Parker launch video
from a remote camera set at pad 37:
Video Caption: Launch of NASA’s Parker Solar Probe on United Launch Alliance
Delta IV Heavy rocket on Aug. 12, 2018, at 3:31 a.m. EDT from Launch
Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida on humanity’s 1st
mission to our sun that will fly through the sun’s atmosphere or corona - as seen in this remote camera video taken at the pad. Credit:
Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com/spaceupclose.com
Here’s my BBC TV World News
Pre-Launch interview:
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, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida and Wallops Flight Facility, Virginia.
Stay tuned here for Ken's continuing Earth and Planetary science and human spaceflight news: www.kenkremer.com –www.spaceupclose.com – twitter @ken_kremer – email: ken at kenkremer.com
Credit: Jeff Seibert
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