BiotechMashup

(Southwest Research Institute) NASA selected two instruments led by Southwest Research Institute, which measure energetic particles for the Solar Probe Plus spacecraft, slated to launch by 2018. This first-ever journey into the Sun's outer atmosphere -- called the corona -- will seek to answer two of the biggest mysteries in heliophysics: why the Sun's corona is so much hotter than its inner regions, and how the solar wind is accelerated. The answers to these questions can be obtained only through in-situ measurements down in the corona.