3-2-1… and we have liftoff of Parker Solar Probe atop United Launch Alliance’s Delta IV Heavy rocket 🚀. The probe is headed toward the Sun with a whopping 55 times more energy than is required to reach Mars. About the size of a small car, it weighs a mere 1,400 pounds. Zooming through space in a highly elliptical orbit, Parker Solar Probe will reach speeds up to 430,000 miles per hour — fast enough to get from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., in a second — setting the record for the fastest spacecraft in history. During its nominal mission lifetime of just under 7 years, Parker Solar Probe will complete 24 orbits of the Sun — reaching within 3.8 million miles of the Sun’s surface at closest approach. We’ll be going where no spacecraft has dared go before — within the corona of a star. With each orbit, we’ll be seeing new regions of the Sun’s atmosphere and learning things about stellar mechanics that we’ve wanted to explore for decades. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls #NASA #space #Par...