Warp Speed Edition with Madhulika Guhathakurta, Marco Velli and Rod Roddenberry

Join us for a special holiday edition of The Wormhole, for an delightful conversation with NASA SHEliophysicist Madhulika Guhathakurta, UCLA Professor of Space Physics Marco Velli, and Star Trek Executive Producer and Guardian of the Star Trek Legacy, as we celebrate the Parker Solar Probe’s perihelion—the point in the orbit of the spacecraft which it is closest to the sun. In 2018, this engineering marvel broke the record of being the closest a human-made object has ever been to to the sun, at 26.55 million miles—a record previously set in 1976 by the Helios 2 spacecraft, which got within 27 million miles of the sun. The Parker Solar Probe will be much closer and will be traveling at 430,000 mph at perihelion, also making it the "fastest human-made object in history.”

The Parker Solar Probe will “touch” the Sun on Christmas Eve, December 24th, and we want to celebrate this historic event with you. From this moment on, whenever you look at that Christmas Star/Sun of the top of your Christmas Tree, you will remember where you were when this exciting moment happened.

And, as any fan of Star Trek knows, if you can get going fast enough, using the Sun as a slingshot, you can travel through time. Just how fast is the probe traveling as measured in impulse or warp speed? Where in time will it end up? We’ll also discuss just what the fate of this probe will be as its NASA mission comes to a close.