In the pre-dawn hours Sunday morning, the Parker Solar Probe blasted off from Cape Canaveral. Among those watching was an astrophysicist who worked on the unique spacecraft…who’s also a Springfield native and survivor of the 1998 Thurston School Shooting. KLCC’s Brian Bull reports.
Tony Case is with the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He and other scientists designed an instrument called the solar probe cup.
“It’s an instrument that measures the particles flowing from the sun, that we call the solar wind," explains Case.
"Our instrument pokes around the heat shield, looks directly at the sun… it really is just a cup, and particles just kinda flow into it and we catch them, and count how many of them there are.”
Case watched the Parker Solar Probe take off from the Kennedy Space Center, and said past the nerve-wracking launch, the next defining moment will be in roughly 45 days when they try to bring all the spacecraft’s instruments online.
Case was among two dozen injured in the Thurston High School shooting. He says he doesn’t give the incident much thought, focusing instead on his work and bright spots of his life.
WEB EXTRA: See the launch of the Parker Solar Probe on August 12, 2018.
WEB EXTRA: Hear an extended conversation between Harvard Smithsonian astrophysicist Tony Case and KLCC's Brian Bull about the Parker Solar Probe mission, his team's contribution to the project, and how he observed the 20th anniversary of the Thurston School Shooting.
Your browser doesn’t support HTML5 audio
Copyright 2018, KLCC.