The Parker Solar Probe will launch this year on an extraordinary and historic mission to swoop to within four million miles of the surface of the sun — closer than any spacecraft before it — and experience brutal heat and radiation conditions like no spacecraft before it in order to provide new data on solar activity and make critical contributions to our ability to forecast major space-weather events which impact life on Earth…
Maybe You Cannot Travel to the Sun — But Your Name Can. Here is How
…and while you cannot embark as a passenger on this first mission to travel to the sun, your name can: simply submit your first name, last name and e-mail address at no cost to you through the deadline of Friday, April 27, 2018; and it will be included in a memory card which will fly aboard the Parker Solar Probe spacecraft, which will provide humanity with the closest view of a star ever in history.
This mission “is exploring arguably the last and most important region of the solar system to be visited by a spacecraft to finally answer top-priority science goals for over five decades” in order to unlock the mysteries of the corona while simultaneously attempting to protect a society which is increasingly dependent on technology from the threats of space weather.
“One recent study by the National Academy of Sciences estimated that without advance warning a huge solar event could cause two trillion dollars in damage in the US alone, and the eastern seaboard of the US could be without power for a year.”
Summary
Space is considered the last frontier. Although I would not travel to the sun — the trip itself could get slightly warmer than Florida in the summertime — I would travel to outer space if I had the opportunity as long as I would be able to return to Earth…
…but as I most likely will never have the opportunity, I suppose sending my name to the sun is better than nothing at all…
Illustration of the Parker Solar Probe spacecraft approaching the Sun. Source: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben.
