In July 2018, NASA will launch their first mission ever to fly directly into the sun's atmosphere. It will orbit within only 6 million km from the sun's "surface". To compare : the sun's radius is about 695990 km and the distance earth-sun is 150 000 000 km.
The objective of this mission "Touching the Sun" is to understand better what's happening in the sun's atmosphere and gatter data to predict space weather more accurate.
The mission is named after Eugene Parker, who in 1958 announced that the sun constantly sends out matter and magnetism affecting the entire solar system. Today we know this is as the solar wind forming the Heliosphere.
