On 12 August 2018, American Space Agency NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) embarked on a mission that was never before attempted-a mission to 'touch' the Sun. A spacecraft called Parker Solar Probe was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, USA to travel through the solar system and enter the Sun's outermost atmosphere, the Corona. About the size of a small car, it will travel towards the Sun's atmosphere with a speed of 7,00,000 km/h being the fastest man-made object. During it's 7-year lifetime, it is expected to make 24 passes near the Sun to collect all the data astronomers need to develop deeper understandings of the dynamics that spark space weather events. 

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Sun-Earth relationship

Basically The Sun is a big ball of gas that is made of 95% hydrogen, 4.5% helium and the remaining is contributed by various heavier elements from Lithium to Iron. It is not just the life-sustaining light and warmth that we receive from the Sun. An invisible stream of solar material consisting of charged particles, high-energy electromagnetic radiation, and strong magnetic field lines, known as 'solar storm' continuously buffet the Earth's upper atmosphere and protective magnetic field. This bombardment generates what astronomers call 'space weather.' Though astronomers have been studying it for 10 decades now, there are some questions for which definite answers are not available. The Parker Solar Probe is designed to collect firsthand information on solar storm by plunging into the area of the Sun where it is actually generated.

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The state of the art heat shield

Since the Corona reaches a temperature above million degrees of Celsius, the biggest challenge in the construction of the probe was to keep it from burning out. How much heat would the probe experience when it is closest to the Sun? To answer this question one has to differentiate between temperature and heat. In space, temperature can be thousands of degrees without delivering significant heat to a object near by. it means how fast the particles are moving, whereas heat means the total amount of energy the particles transfer to an object in their encounter. Particles may be moving fast (that is high temperature), but if there are very few of them, an object encountering them will not experience much heat.

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Solar magnetism-the driving force

The mystery of the coronal heating and the occurrence of solar storms both seem to be intimately connected with each other and driven by the complex solar magnetic field lines. Like Earth, the Sun also rotates on it's axis. With this, the plasma in the inner layers of the Sun also rotates, producing a powerful magnetic field, by what is known as the 'Dynamo effect'. It rotates faster at the equator and slower towards the poles. Due to this differential rotation highly tangled loops of magnetic field lines, are formed at the equatorial region. Plasma travels with it's own magnetic field lines entrapped in the material. Under normal conditions, the magnetic field lines don't break or merge with other field lines.