Author: Nancy Shute / Source: Science News
Space travel still sounds like just about the coolest thing ever, even though we have learned that it brings with it nausea, sleeplessness, radiation exposure, muscle loss, vision changes, cranky fellow explorers and the challenge of going to the bathroom in zero gravity.
And that’s just with the “easy” stuff, like living on the International Space Station. Let’s not even get started on a possible mission to Mars (SN: 11/29/14, p. 22).Fortunately, we have robot friends out exploring the cosmos for us.
Right now, the Parker Solar Probe is winging its way to the sun’s corona. Once it arrives in November, the probe will study electric and magnetic fields as well as solar wind, the charged particles that flow from the sun. Astronomy writer Lisa Grossman talked to the scientists who figured out how to sling the spacecraft through the sizzling corona…
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