I heard it got delayed at the last minute..

Yesterday

Just saw the story!

Glad they fixed the problem!

'Finally go up and touch the sun'

By better understanding the sun's life-giving and sometimes violent nature, Earthlings can better protect satellites and astronauts in orbit, and power grids on the ground, he noted.

In today's tech-dependent society, everyone stands to benefit.

With this mission, scientists hope to unlock the many mysteries of the sun, a commonplace yellow dwarf star around 4.5 billion years old.

Among the puzzlers: Why is the corona hundreds of times hotter than the surface of the sun and why is the sun's atmosphere continually expanding and accelerating, as the University of Chicago's Mr Parker accurately predicted in 1958?

"The only way we can do that is to finally go up and touch the sun," Mr Fox said.

"We've looked at it. We've studied it from missions that are close in, even as close as the planet Mercury. But we have to go there."

The spacecraft's heat shield will serve as an umbrella, shading the science instruments during the close, critical solar junctures.

Sensors on the spacecraft will make certain the heat shield faces the sun at the right times.

If there's any tilting, the spacecraft will correct itself so nothing gets fried.

With a communication lag time of 8 minutes each way, the spacecraft must fend for itself at the sun. The Johns Hopkins flight controllers in Laurel, Maryland, will be too far away to help.

A mission to get close up and personal with our star has been on NASA's books since 1958.

The trick was making the spacecraft small, compact and light enough to travel at incredible speeds, while surviving the sun's punishing environment and the extreme change in temperature when the spacecraft is out near Venus.

"We've had to wait so long for our technology to catch up with our dreams," Mr Fox said.

"It's incredible to be standing here today."

More than 1 million names are aboard the spacecraft, submitted last spring by space enthusiasts, as well as photos of Mr Parker, the man, and a copy of his 1958 landmark paper on solar wind.

"I'll bet you 10 bucks it works," Mr Parker said.

Our world! Everyone goes sunbathing somewhere, how many heard about Mr. Parker?

OOH!!!

I have!!

I LOVE space documentaries!!

Me too!

Water on the Moon!

YouTube

NASA | Water on the Moon

Since the 1960's, scientists have suspected that frozen water could survive in cold, dark craters at the Moon's poles. While previous lunar missions have det...

 

(Supplied: NASA)

After years of tantalising hints, scientists have finally found direct evidence of water ice tucked away at the bottom of craters near the moon's poles.

"A long time ago people thought 'Oh, we've solved this problem', but not many people realise we do not have any definitive evidence," said Shuai Li, a planetary scientist at the University of Hawaii.

His team's findings, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, boosts the moon's potential as a habitable destination and stepping stone for future space missions.

Back in the early 1960s, scientists proposed that water ice could exist in permanently shaded parts of bodies such as the moon, Mercury and the dwarf planet Ceres.

In the past decade, hydrogen-rich areas have been detected at the poles by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and the Indian spacecraft Chandrayaan-1.

Hydrogen is a fundamental component of water — so evidence of hydrogen has been interpreted to indicate the presence of water near the poles. But that data can be misleading, Dr Li said.

"It could be hydrogen, it could be hydroxl, it could be water, or could be anything else with hydrogen. The data can not distinguish which is which," he said.

Hydrogen is also a component of the solar wind — a constant stream of high energy particles from the sun that whips across the surface of the moon.

Continued..