Sunskimmer 57

 I helped deploy a sunskimmer satellite (that's a tongue twister!) over a year ago. My job was to fuel up the PAM (payload assist module) that boosted the satellite out of lunar orbit toward the sun.

It was so long ago, I forgot about it until I got a message on my tablet saying:

You are cordially invited to attend our virtual event as Sunskimmer 57 dives into the sun's atmosphere at almost 600,000 kilometers per hour (about 373,000 miles per hour)!

For this dangerous mission, the sunskimmer will deploy a nanosat about the size of a coffee cup to take images of the spacecraft as it makes the first of many close passes into the sun's corona.

I wasn't busy that day, so I tuned in from Gordo Station along with a couple other students and a physics professor.

We watched the nanosat's video feed, then we all gasped! The edges of Sunskimmer 57 started to flicker and glow, and a trail of ionized gas started building - almost like a man-made comet.

The announcer back on the moon said, "We are seeing Sunskimmer 57's active magnetic field in action for the first time. This new technology acts like a tiny version of Earth's magnetic field to shield the spacecraft from charged particles.



More about solar probes: http://parkersolarprobe.jhuapl.edu/