NASA's mission to the Sun

NASA plans to launch a mission to the sun at the earliest in 2015. The project has sparked a great deal of interest at NASA as the sun's atmosphere is one of the most foreign and unknown to humankind. As program scientist Lika Guhathakurta of NASA Headquarters states, "This is an unexplored region of the solar system and the possibilities for discovery are off the charts." The probe, even at the closest point will only come within 7 million km of the sun where it will have to contend with heat and radiation levels never experienced by any spacecraft. The heat shield on the probe (which is solar-powered thank god, if it wasn't someone should be killed, it is afterall the sun) will have to tolerate temperatures above 1400 degrees celsius, and at the distance mentioned, the sun will appear 23 times wider than it does here on Earth. The depth of the sun's atmosphere of which the solar probe is to penetrate will supposedly answer two very prominent questions in astrophysics, so the project has good reason for such high-interest. Personally, I envision a slight miscalculation, sending the probe a few km too far into the sun's atmosphere where it will melt or explode (hopefully explode, since explosions are just better). Although, I hope this doesn't occur as this would render various people's hardwork for the better half of a decade useless.