Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory designed and built the spacecraft,[11] which was launched on 12 August 2018.

[2] It became the first NASA spacecraft named after a living person, honoring physicist Eugene Newman Parker, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago.

[18] The Parker Solar Probe concept originates in the 1958 report by the Fields and Particles Group, Committee 8 of the National Academy of Sciences' Space Science Board,[19][20][21] which proposed several space missions including "a solar probe to pass inside the orbit of Mercury to study the particles and fields in the vicinity of the Sun".

[24][25] The original Solar Probe design used a gravity assist from Jupiter to enter a polar orbit which dropped almost directly toward the Sun.

Following the appointment of Sean O'Keefe as Administrator of NASA, the entirety of the OPSP program was canceled as part of President George W. Bush's request for the 2003 United States federal budget.

[27] The redesigned mission uses multiple Venus gravity assists for a more direct flight path, which can be powered by solar panels.

[32][33] The launch rocket bore a dedication in memory of APL engineer Andrew A. Dantzler who had worked on the project.

[34] A memory card containing names submitted by over 1.1 million people was mounted on a plaque and installed below the spacecraft's high-gain antenna.

[35] The card also contains photos of Parker and a copy of his 1958 scientific paper predicting important aspects of solar physics.

The spacecraft systems and scientific instruments are located in the central portion of the shield's shadow, where direct radiation from the Sun is fully blocked.

As radio communication with Earth takes about eight minutes in each direction, the Parker Solar Probe has to act autonomously and rapidly to protect itself.

This is done using four light sensors to detect the first traces of direct sunlight coming from the shield limits and engaging movements from reaction wheels to reposition the spacecraft within the shadow again.

This secondary array uses pumped-fluid cooling to maintain operating temperature of the solar panels and instrumentation.

[4][42] As the probe passes around the Sun, it will achieve a velocity of up to 200 km/s (120 mi/s) in the heliocentric ecliptic reference frame, which will temporarily make it the fastest human-made object, almost three times as fast as the previous record holder, Helios-2.

[21] As described by Kepler's laws of planetary motion which applies to any object in an orbit, due to gravity the spacecraft will accelerate as it nears perihelion, then slow down again afterward until it reaches its aphelion.

Because of its highly elliptical orbit and the Sun's strong gravity, this effect is particularly pronounced for the Parker Solar Probe.

During a perihelion on September 27, 2023, the spacecraft traveled at 394,736 miles per hour (176.5 km/s), fast enough to fly from New York to Tokyo in just over a minute.

[46] A beacon transmission was made and received successfully on December 20 to confirm that the craft was operating normally ahead of the perihelion.

[49] The goals of the mission are:[37] Parker Solar Probe has four main instruments:[50][51] An additional theoretical investigation named Heliospheric origins with Solar Probe Plus (HeliOSPP) starting from 2010 and ending in 2024 has the role of providing theoretical input and independent assessment of scientific performance to the Science Working Group (SWG) and the SPP Project to maximize the scientific return from the mission.

The Principal Investigator is Marco Velli at the University of California, Los Angeles and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory; he also serves as the Observatory Scientist for the mission.

On 9 September 2018, the two WISPR telescopic cameras performed a successful first-light test, transmitting wide-angle images of the background sky towards the Galactic Center.

These measurements confirm the hypothesis that Alfvén waves are the leading candidates for understanding the mechanisms that underlie the coronal heating problem.

SolO observed the Sun, while PSP sampled the plasma of the solar wind, allowing scientists to compare data from both probes.