Parker Solar Probe, Take the Solar Plunge Options

[ljk4-1]

Any serious plans to send a probe into the Sun to explore its depths as far as possible?

What would help a probe last as long as it could and how deep could it get?

Could it even radio or laser out any data?

What about a Sun skimmer?

[Holder of the Tw...]

The time from launch to probe entry for Venera 3 could have been either 105 or 106 days (105 is listed on the Wikipedia article, my date calculation is 106 not taking hours and minutes into account).

Regardless of the launch date, I would expect Parker to arrive at Venus on or near September 30th. Recent Mars probes launched late had pretty close to the same arrival dates. There might be a couple days difference.

More important, they are starting to run out of time. As explained in this article which was issued for the Aug 6th launch date, they only have until August 19th (or maybe August 23rd at the very latest) to get it off before spending a lot more time and money waiting. And I will guarantee you a different Venus fly by date if that happens.

EDIT I believe the current holder of the record for Earth to Venus is Mariner 10, which made the trip in 95 days. Also, I neglected to notice that this launch differs from the Mars shots I mention due to being a high energy trajectory. So the effect on the arrival date might be more significant, but I don't know by how much.

[JRehling]

Mariner 10 reached Venus in 94 days. I don't know if that's the record, but I thought it would be worth checking since the whole point of the encounter was for a gravity assist on such a high-delta-v mission.