Now based at Venus, one of NASA’s intrepid explorers of the solar system is headed for a close encounter with this hothouse of an Earth-sized planet on November 6. Parker Solar Probe studies the closest star to our planet, the Sun. Its mission is to trace the flow of energy that heats the Sun’s outer atmosphere and accelerates the stream of particles it emits a million miles per hour. He takes his measurements super close to the sun, in the area where all the action takes place. To do this, the spacecraft was designed to fly within just 6 million kilometers of the Sun’s surface, which is ten times closer than the orbit of the nearest planet, Mercury. No other spacecraft has ever come this close to the sun before. In the six years since launch, the spacecraft has made a number of approaches to the sun, using flybys of the planet Venus to shape its orbit. The Nov. 6 flyby is the last such maneuver, intended to send the spacecraft to its three closest solar approaches ever starting Dec. 24. During this final Venus flyby, the mission will capture images of the planet. Previous images from Parker showed that the spacecraft could actually see features of Venus’ surface through the dense cloud cover. So look for Venus in the evening sky as the beautiful planet helps an Earth spacecraft hit the sun’s surface.