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NASA: First Probe To Touch The Sun Will Carry 1.1 Million Names Details
NASA: First Probe To Touch The Sun Will Carry 1.1 Million Names- Detail Report
As per the US-National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Parker Solar Probe, humanity's first mission to 'touch' a star will carry over 1.1 million people's names to the Sun on 31st July 2018.
Throughout its 7 year mission, the probe will swoop through the Sun's atmosphere 24 times, getting closer to our star than any spacecraft has gone before.
Parker Solar Probe will revolutionise NASA understanding of the Sun, the only star we can study up close. It will carry more than scientific instruments on this historic journey, it will also hold more than 1.1 million names submitted by the public to go to the Sun.
NASA invited people around the world to submit their names online to be placed on a microchip aboard its historic Parker Solar Probe. Submissions were accepted till April 27.
NASA this week revealed that a total of 1,137,202 names were submitted and confirmed over the seven-and-a-half-week period and a memory card containing the names was installed on the spacecraft on May 18 - three months before the scheduled launch on 31st July.
The memory card was mounted on a plaque bearing a dedication to and a quote from the mission's namesake Eugene Parker, who first theorised the existence of the solar wind. This is the first NASA mission to be named for a living individual.
Parker Solar Probe will explore the Sun's outer atmosphere and make critical observations to answer decades-old questions about the physics of stars.
The resulting data may also improve forecasts of major eruptions on the Sun and subsequent space weather events that impact life on Earth, as well as satellites and astronauts in space.
