Context:

• NASA is turning 60 in 2018 and the agency is looking forward to launching a slew of important missions in the coming year, including one to “touch” the sun.
• NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is scheduled for launch in 2018 to explore the sun’s outer atmosphere.
• The probe will use Venus’ gravity during seven flybys over nearly seven years to gradually bring its orbit closer to the sun.
• The Parker Solar Probe will perform its scientific investigations in a hazardous region of intense heat and solar radiation.
• The primary goals for the mission are to trace how energy and heat move through the solar corona and to explore what accelerates the solar wind as well as solar energetic particles.

Mars fleet:

• In 2018, NASA will also add to its existing robotic fleet on Mars with the InSight lander designed to study the interior and subsurface of the red planet.
• The U.S. space agency’s first asteroid sample return mission, OSIRIS-REx, is scheduled to arrive at the near-Earth asteroid Bennu in August 2018, and will return a sample for study in 2023.
• A survey satellite to search for planets outside the solar system is also to be launched.

Source:TH