A NASA (www.nasa.gov) spacecraft will aim straight for the Sun next year, bearing the name of the astrophysicist who predicted the existence of the solar wind nearly 60 years ago.

The purpose is to study the Sun’s outer atmosphere and improve our understanding of the workings of the solar system.

The space agency announced at the end of May that the mission would be named after Eugene Parker, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago; it is the first NASA spacecraft to be named after a researcher who is still alive.

Scheduled to launch next summer from Cape Canaveral, the Parker Solar Probe will fly within 6.4 million km of the Sun’s surface — right into the solar atmosphere.

That will be considerably closer than any spacecraft has ever gone before, and it will subject the probe to intense levels of heat and radiation.

The spacecraft and its instruments will be protected by a carbon-composite shield almost 12cm thick, to enable them to withstand temperatures of 1,377°C.

The nearest NASA has got to the Sun previously was in 1976, when it launched two probes (in a joint venture with West Germany’s space agency) that went within about 43 million km of the Sun’s surface — closer than the planet Mercury at 57.9 million km.