NASA’s sun-skimming spacecraft, the Parker Solar Probe, is surprising scientists with its unprecedented views of our star. NASA’s Nicola Fox, director of the space agency’s heliophysics division, compared this unexpected switchback phenomenon to the cracking of a whip. “We’re just starting to scratch the surface of this fascinating physics,” said Princeton University space plasma physicist David McComas, the chief scientist of one of the spacecraft’s instruments. Verscharen studies the sun but was not part of the NASA mission. Over the summer, Fox shared these early results with solar astrophysicist Eugene Parker, 92, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago for whom the spacecraft is named.

Source: Los Angeles Times December 05, 2019 04:30 UTC