Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory

The moment of closest approach on December 24th, 2024, was among the most dramatic events in the history of space exploration.

For weeks beforehand, the mission team at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory knew that Parker Solar Probe would be flying through the most extreme environment any spacecraft had ever entered, the corona, the superheated outer atmosphere of the Sun, a region where temperatures climb into the millions of degrees and the solar wind is still accelerating outward from the surface.

No probe had ever gone this deep.

No instrument had ever operated this close.

Parker Solar Probe's Venus encounters required the spacecraft to arrive at a specific point in space, at a specific time, travelling at a specific velocity, with an accuracy measured in miles across distances of millions.

A tiny error in approach, angle or timing could send the spacecraft into a wrong orbit, one too high or too low, potentially ruining the entire mission.

The navigation teams at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, where Parker Solar Probe was designed and built, calculated these trajectories years in advance and adjusted them with small engine burns along the way, correcting for every minor deviation, ensuring each Venus encounter threaded the keyhole perfectly.

Only after the orbital problem was solved, only after the trajectory was designed, the gravity assists were planned, the rocket was selected, and the velocity budget was closed, only then did engineers turn to the second great challenge of reaching the Sun, heat.

a car-sized drone designed to fly through Titan's thick nitrogen atmosphere and hop between landing sites on its surface.

The mission passed its critical design review in 2024 and construction of the spacecraft began in March 2026 at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

It is scheduled to launch in July 2028 on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Kennedy Space Center.

After a six-year cruise, including an Earth Gravity Assist, Dragonfly will arrive at Titan in 2034.

The closest approach brought the spacecraft within 12,500 kilometers of Pluto's surface.

The signal confirming a successful flyby took 4 hours and 25 minutes to reach mission control at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, travelling at the speed of light across the solar system.

What came back in the data changed the way scientists think about the outer solar system.

The expectation, going in, was that Pluto would look like a frozen relic.

In 2023, a reanalysis of Voyager, two-particle and magnetic field data produced an unexpected finding.

A team led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory found evidence that both Ariel and Miranda may be releasing material into the space environment around Uranus.

The data showed anomalies in the charged particle measurements near the orbits of both moons, patterns consistent with material being injected into the magnetosphere from the moons themselves.

The most natural explanation was outgassing or plume activity, similar in concept to the dramatic water vapour geysers that Cassini observed erupting from the south polar region of Saturn's moon Enceladus.