Solar probe - The first flight into the Sun's corona

The NASA Solar Probe mission to the inner frontier of the heliosphere is a part of the Sun-Earth Connection theme within the Office of Space Science. A NASA-appointed Science Definition Team has defined a Solar Probe mission and its scientific objectives. These include making measurements to understand the processes that heat the solar corona and produce the solar wind, subjects of continuing scientific debate. The Solar Probe mission will accomplish these objectives with a combination of in situ measurements designed to characterize the local heating and acceleration of plasma near the Sun and high resolution images to detect small-scale, transient magnetic structures at and around the Sun. In order to sample the solar corona acceleration region, Solar Probe will fly to four solar radii from the center of the Sun in an orbit inclined 90degrees to the plane of the ecliptic. Engineering solutions to design a probe that can withstand the near-Sun environment have been proposed for several decades. Current status of the Solar Probe concept is provided in this paper.