Image source: NASA

NASA has unveiled a “cutting-edge heat shield” that will make it possible for a space probe to “touch the sun” — or at least get a spacecraft to within 4 million miles of it, which scientists are hailing as nothing short of a “revolutionary” development in space technology.

The announcement was made via the official site NASA.gov as the launch of the Parker Solar Probe is readied for its August 4 liftoff date: “The launch of Parker Solar Probe, the mission that will get closer to the Sun than any human-made object has ever gone, is quickly approaching, and on June 27, 2018, Parker Solar Probe’s heat shield — called the Thermal Protection System, or TPS — was installed on the spacecraft.”

The heat shield, measuring eight feet in diameter, will reach nearly 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit while keeping the probe’s instruments at about 85 degrees, allowing the probe to “collect unprecedented data” on the giant ball of fire and earth’s most vital source of energy, previously impossible to access without a protective shield, and will allow “the spacecraft’s orbit will carry it to within 4 million miles of the Sun’s fiercely hot surface,” according to NASA.

For comparison, the closest that planet Mercury ever gets to the sun during its orbit is approximately 29 million miles, allowing surface temperatures to reach 800 degrees Fahrenheit (430 °C). And Earth’s average distance to the sun is 93 million miles. At the core of the sun, temperatures can reach more than 27 million degrees Fahrenheit (15 million °C), scientists have estimated.

Parker #SolarProbe will fly closer to the Sun than any human-made object before. A state-of-the-art heat shield (just installed @JHUAPL) makes this extreme journey possible, keeping the spacecraft at 85° F — even while the shield reaches 2,500° F!