Scientists just released the first results from NASA's Parker Solar Probe, a mission to “touch” the sun. NASA launched the probe in August 2018, and it has already made a few laps around the sun. Along the way, it's brought new insights into the sun's outer atmosphere, as well as uncovered surprising facts about the solar wind and the sun's magnetic fields.
Over the next few years, the probe will swoop around the sun several more times, getting closer to it than any spacecraft before it — close enough to fly through the corona, the streaky outer layers of the sun that are visible during a total solar eclipse.
