NASA is flying a spacecraft on a mission to ‘touch’ the sun

The world’s first visit to a star begins today: NASA's Parker Solar Probe is launching a satellite today on a mission to explore the sun's atmosphere, according to CNN. The Probe is expected to get closer to the sun than any man-made object ever has and should orbit around 3.9 mn miles away its surface by 2024. “We've been studying the Sun for decades, and now we're finally going to go where the action is," said Alex Young, solar scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (watch, runtime: 01:43).