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NASA is launching a new space probe early Saturday that will be the first to study the sun up close, and you can watch live coverage of the historic liftoff right here.
The Parker Solar Probe is scheduled to launch at 3:33 a.m. EDT from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. NASA’s live coverage starts at 3:00 a.m.
The probe is embarking on a seven-year mission to study the solar corona, the sun’s ultra-hot atmosphere where destructive blasts like solar flares and so-called coronal mass ejections originate. These eruptions hurl streams of plasma and charged particles into space that can endanger astronauts in space and interfere with electronics on Earth.
The Parker Solar Probe will get closer to the sun than any other spacecraft in history.
“The solar corona is one of the last places in the solar system where no spacecraft has visited before,” Adam Szabo, a mission scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in a written statement. “It gives me the sense of excitement of an explorer.”