At a Glance

NASA said they're about one month away from sending a spacecraft to enter the sun's atmosphere.The Parker Solar Probe is scheduled to launch in early August.One of the main points of study is the sun's corona, which produces solar wind, flares and coronal mass ejections.

The sun is the next target for NASA, and a spacecraft will get close enough to touch the star next month.

The Parker Solar Probewillexplorewhat is arguably the last and most important region of the solar system , according to its official website. Researchers plan to get close enough to the sun to study its corona, which is unstable and produces solar wind, flares and coronal mass ejections.

The spacecraft will be placed in orbit within four million miles of the sun’s surface – seven times closer than any spacecraft has ever been to the star – and will be forced to withstand heat and radiation unlike , according to a release.

"Parker Solar Probe, about the size of a small car, will provide unprecedented information about our sun, where changing conditions can spread out into the solar system to affect Earth and other worlds," said NASA. "The spacecraft will fly directly into the Sun's atmosphere where, from a safe distance of approximately 4 million miles from its surface, the spacecraft will trace how energy and heat move through the Sun's atmosphere and explore what accelerates the solar wind and solar energetic particles."

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The probe will be built to stand up to the intense conditions of the sun with a 4.5-inch-thick carbon-composite shield that will be constructed to withstand temperatures as high as 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit,the mission’s page said.

It will explore the sun's outer atmosphere and make observations that will hopefully help solve decades-old mysteries about how stars work, as well as provide data that will help improve forecasts of major space weather events, according to the release.

At its closest approach, the probe will orbit the sun at roughly 450,000 miles per hour, which is fast enough to travel from WashingtonD.C. to Philadelphia in a second, according to the missionwebsite.

The three main objectives of the mission are to trace the flow of energy heating and accelerating the solar corona and wind, determine the structure and dynamics of plasma and magnetic fields at the sources of solar wind, and to explore the mechanisms that are accelerating and transporting particles of energy, according to its website.

The Parker Solar Probe is expected to launch in the early-morning hours of Aug. 4 and is scheduled to end in June 2025.