https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap191209.html
with video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4TU3arrZR8
science link on
nasas-parker-solar-probe-sheds-new-light-on-the-sun 4 Dec
and
Parker Solar Probe First Findings – Media Telecon 4 Dec
and video explanation

Everybody sees the Sun. Nobody’s been there. Starting in 2018 though, NASA launched the robotic Parker Solar Probe (PSP) to investigate regions near to the Sun for the first time. The PSP’s looping orbit brings it yet closer to the Sun each time around — every few months. The featured time-lapse video shows the view looking sideways from behind PSP’s Sun shield during its first approach to the Sun a year ago — to about half the orbit of Mercury. The PSP’s Wide Field Imager for Solar Probe (WISPR) cameras took the images over nine days, but they are digitally compressed here into about 14 seconds. The waving solar corona is visible on the far left, with stars, planets, and even the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy streaming by in the background as the PSP orbits the Sun. PSP has found the solar neighborhood to be surprisingly complex and to include switchbacks — times when the Sun’s magnetic field briefly reverses itself.

The Parker Solar probe has approached the Sun twice now, on Nov 2018 and Apr 2019. It gets closer with each approach.

It became the first NASA spacecraft named after a living person, honoring physicist Eugene Parker, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago.

There ya go. Was wondering who it was named after and I’ll admit to not having ever heard of him.

sibeen said:

It became the first NASA spacecraft named after a living person, honoring physicist Eugene Parker, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago.

There ya go. Was wondering who it was named after and I’ll admit to not having ever heard of him.

Obviously the WISE satellite wasn’t named after anybody living. ;-)