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NASA鈥檚 Parker Solar Probe is on its way to meet the sun. The spacecraft, which is intended to enter and study the Sun鈥檚 scorching atmosphere, launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on Sunday at 3:31 am local time, after a failed attempt on the previous day.

The probe is equipped with a carbon heat shield to protect it from the sun鈥檚 radiation, which is about 500 times more intense than it is on Earth. It will fly through the sun鈥檚 tenuous atmosphere, the corona, whose temperature can reach a few million degrees Celsius.

The mission team hope that a close look at the corona will solve some ongoing mysteries, such as why the corona is 300 times hotter than sun鈥檚 surface. They also want to study coronal mass ejections, outbursts of solar particles that can disrupt the Earth鈥檚 magnetic field and interfere with satellites and power grids.

Shooting the probe directly toward the sun would require tremendous energy, about 55 times more than it takes to get to Mars. Instead, the probe is taking a detour to Venus, where it will arrive on 2 October. The planet鈥檚 gravity will assist the spacecraft in orbiting closer to the sun.

The probe will dip into the corona for the first time in November. In total it will make 24 loops around the sun during its seven-year mission, and it will come within 6.2 million kilometres of its surface, the closest an artificial object has ever been.