NASA’s Parker Solar Probe Aims to Fly Closer to the Sun Like Never Before

NEW YORK—A NASA spacecraft aims to fly closer to the sun than any object sent before. The Parker Solar Probe was launched in 2018 to get a close-up look at the sun. Since then, it has flown straight through the sun’s corona: the outer atmosphere visible during a total solar eclipse. The next milestone: closest approach to the sun. Plans call for Parker on Tuesday to hurtle through the sizzling solar atmosphere and pass within a record-breaking 3.8 million miles of the sun’s surface. At that moment, if the sun and Earth were at opposite ends of a football field, Parker “would be on the 4-yard line,” said NASA’s Joe Westlake....