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NASA "Solar Probe Plus" Announcement at 11 AM EDT

posted by takyon on Wednesday May 31 2017, @02:20PM   Printer-friendly
from the flying-money-into-the-sun dept.

NASA will discuss its plans for the Solar Probe Plus soon (11 AM EDT, 3 PM UTC):

NASA will make an announcement about the agency's first mission to fly directly into our sun's atmosphere during an event at 11 a.m. EDT Wednesday, May 31, from the University of Chicago's William Eckhardt Research Center Auditorium. The event will air live on NASA Television and the agency's website.

Both the Solar Probe Plus and ESA's Solar Orbiter are planned to launch in 2018.

Update: They renamed Solar Probe Plus to "Parker Solar Probe" after Eugene Parker, a living scientist who developed the theory of solar wind.

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 31 2017, @03:33PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 31 2017, @03:33PM (#518331)

    Why don't they just dump their presentation online, rather than always trying to do this old-school announcement-about-an-announcement government crap?

    • (Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Wednesday May 31 2017, @04:43PM

      by WizardFusion (498) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 31 2017, @04:43PM (#518362) Journal

      Well, if you don't have a pre-announcement about an announcement, they how will you know that the announcement is something you want to be interested in.!

      People also like to have meetings about meetings. It makes them feel important when in fact they have nothing of value to a process.

    • (Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Wednesday May 31 2017, @11:32PM (1 child)

      by linkdude64 (5482) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 31 2017, @11:32PM (#518576)

      Unfortunately, NASA needs to build hype. You might think they are not a commercial business, but they need to advertise all the same to keep their brand name recognizable not only to Congress, but to young people whose talent they want to recruit. Hate them if you wish, they will keep doing cool shit with or without your approval, but only if they continue their current behavior.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @12:39AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 01 2017, @12:39AM (#518604)

        That's definitely the mantra of the governmentalist.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Wednesday May 31 2017, @03:57PM (2 children)

    by Thexalon (636) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 31 2017, @03:57PM (#518346)

    I can think of a lot of people that the world would be better off firing into the sun.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.

    • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday May 31 2017, @05:22PM (1 child)

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Wednesday May 31 2017, @05:22PM (#518387)

      From my experience, that includes most politicians, corporate executives, police, car salesmen, churchgoers, telemarketers, and software developers.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by DonkeyChan on Wednesday May 31 2017, @08:54PM

    by DonkeyChan (5551) on Wednesday May 31 2017, @08:54PM (#518509)

    If they don't change the name to Project Icarus someone should be flogged.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 31 2017, @10:55PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 31 2017, @10:55PM (#518550)

    The last item in
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Solar_Probe#Trajectory_and_mission [wikipedia.org]
    notes[1]

    As the probe passes around the Sun, it will achieve a velocity of up to 200 km/s (120 mi/s) making it by any measure, the fastest manmade object ever, almost three times faster than the current record holder, Helios 2.

    [1] Submitter's link also redirects.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

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