About 4.6 billion years ago, miscellaneous materials drew together, gravity causing it all to spin, causing the cloud flatten like into a disc like shape. The material in the center clumped together to soon form a protostar that would soon become the sun. The young protostar was made up of hydrogen and helium but not yet powered by any fusion. Without the process that took place we would never be able to survive here:

The sun. I like to think of like a mother to all of the planets. As if it’s heat and radiation is like a warm embrace( although, to all the youngsters out there, I do not recommend hugging the sun. No, just, no. You’ll learn soon enough kids. You’ll learn soon enough.) For decades scientists and researchers have been studying the sun like hawks watching their own prey. And I am so so grateful that i have so many people I can consult with about these things. In fact I have a bit of a story to tell you:

A few days ago I was talking with my partner in science class about NASA’s latest missions and what they were coming up with next. The only reason we were partners was because my original partner was sick. Therefore I was stuck with the “popular” girl. Now I don’t mean to be rude or anything but she obnoxiously then said the following few comments as I talked: “Oh, MY god Kanmani, when are you ever gonna let go of all this geeky science stuff. I mean c’mon I wanna have a decent conversation that doesn’t include you rambling on and on and on about stupid things.” Well EXCUSE ME, but WHO did ALL of the actual WORK. WHO was writing endlessly while YOU blabbed on and on about makeup and social media. I HAVE A LIFE. WHO got us finished in the first place? WHO was able to make this conversation happen? She then complained about the following things: “Uh, my nail keeps chipping and now it’s getting all over my dress! Oh my gosh, I HATE science class. It’s SoOoOo boring.” Her bright hot pink dress, leggings, cardigan, and shoes made me blind for the whole period. Then I asked her if she heard of the Juno mission( ignoring every single snobby remark by her) “You’re seriously impressed by that? My dad told me about that and honestly I just think it’s a waste of money. Those idiot “scientists” predicted the time wrong by a second. And the mission was just plain stupid.” I stared at her trying to process the words she shot at me.” Then I said something that finally shut her up: “We live in a blue planet that circles around a ball of fire next to a moon that moves the sea. Do you think that’s stupid?” Science. Space. The Universe. The Galaxy. All things that will never ever be called something they don’t deserve to be called. Not when I’m around. Some people just don’t understand what these people are doing. I think it’s revolutionary. But I recently heard something that most people think is really stupid but it’s time that those renegade scientists proved them wrong.

NASA has been planning to touch the sun. Yes and I mean planning. In fact by the time I read the article they posted on Popular Science Magazine’s website, they said already that they were planning to send out a probe into space by the summer of 2018. Imagine, designing, researching, finding material, engineering, everything. Creating a probe that will be able to actually kiss the sun. And may I remind you that the sun is a star. And a star is basically a ball of light and heat. And our specific star is made of light, heat, helium, and hydrogen.  Below is a few pieces of text from the Popular Science article I read( some of the paragraphs are written by me as well):

“Our sun might not seem as enigmatic as more exotic, distant stars, but it’s still a marvelously mysterious miasma of incandescent plasma. And it’s certainly worthy of our scientific attention: Curiosity aside, a violent solar event could disrupt satellites and cause $2 trillion in damages for the U.S. alone. Yet, despite living in its atmosphere, we don’t understand some of its defining phenomena. For sixty years, we haven’t understood why the surface is a cozy 5,500 Celsius, while the halo called the corona—several million kilometers away from the star’s surface and 12 orders of magnitude less dense—boasts a positively sizzling 1-2 million Celsius.

To figure out why, NASA needs to fly a little closer to the sun—and touch it.

We know that magnetic reconnection—when magnetic field lines moving in opposite directions intertwine and snap like rubber bands—propels nuclear weapon-like waves of energy away from surface. Meanwhile, magnetohydrodynamic waves—vibrating guitar string-like waves of magnetic force driven by the flow of plasma—transfer energy from the surface into corona. However, without more data, our understanding of phenomena like coronal heating and solar wind acceleration remain largely theoretical…but not for long.

Launching in 2018, NASA’s Solar Probe Plus will travel nearly seven years, setting a new record for fastest moving object as it zips 37.6 million kilometers closer to the sun than any spacecraft that has ever studied our host star. But what manner of sensory equipment does one bring to Dante’s Inferno?

Spacecraft systems engineer Mary Kae Lockwood tells PopSci that the craft will rely on four main instruments. The Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons systems, or SWEAP, will monitor charges created by colliding electrons, protons and helium ions to analyze solar wind—ninety times closer to the sun than previous attempts. Similarly, the ISIS (Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun) employs a state-of-the-art detection system to analyze energetic particles (think: cancer-causing, satellite-disabling particles).

The FIELDS sensor, meanwhile, will analyze electric and magnetic fields, radio emissions, and shock waves—while gathering information on the high-speed dust particles sanding away at the craft using a technique discovered by accident. Lastly, the Wide-field Imager for Solar Probe, or WISPR telescope, will make 3D, cat-scan-like images of solar wind and the sun’s atmosphere.There’s just one problem. Between intense heat, solar radiation, high-energy particles, the fallout of solar storms, dust, and limited communication opportunities at closest approach, all that sensitive equipment is going to an environment that almost makes Juno’s new home look sympathetic by comparison. “One of the things we had to watch out for in the design,” according to Lockwood, was the electrical “charging” of the spacecraft by the solar wind. The probe has to be conductive “so that the instruments that are actually measuring the solar wind don’t have interference.”

To get close enough to worry about that, though, the probe’s has to “lose some energy” says Lockwood, performing several Venus flybys to shrink its orbit “[allowing] us to get . . . closer and closer to the sun.”However, that comes with “interesting design challenges, because you’re not only going into the sun” as heatshield mechanical engineer Beth Congdon tells PopSci. “You get hot on approach, and then come out and get cold,” over and over for 7 flybys and 24 orbits. “You actually need to have it cyclically survive hot and cold temperatures.” And high energy particles. And hypervelocity dust. For that, you need a heat shield “different from any other heat shield that has ever existed.”

The heat shield that they are designing has to support itself to survive hypervelocity space dust, survive hot and cold temperatures, and many more things that can and will be a threat.

But what I really want to see if that probe can break the space between us and the sun.

Let me touch it. Let me touch the space between us.