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The Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons (SWEAP) instrument suite developed by researchers at The Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) and the Marshall Space Flight Center for NASA’s Parker Solar Probe (PSP) has helped the PSP earn the coveted . The honor, awarded by the since 1911, lauds the greatest achievement in aeronautics or astronautics in America, with prior luminaries including Orville Wright (1913), Chuck Yeager (1947) and the Apollo 11 crew (1969). The trophy will be bestowed on the PSP Team, led by the NASA and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, on June 12 in Washington, D.C.

“The NAA’s awards are the most prestigious and sought-after in the industry,” said Amy Spowart, NAA president and CEO, in making the announcement. “The Collier Trophy is a recognition like no other, and the Parker Solar Probe team’s achievement is an extraordinary example of determination, genius and teamwork.”

Launched in Aug. 2018, the Parker Solar Probe has been gradually orbiting ever closer to the sun’s surface, collecting data to expand our understanding of the corona and solar wind. On Dec. 24, 2024, the PSP mission ventured into the sun’s corona at an altitude of only 3.83 million miles above the solar surface, seven times closer to the sun than any previous spacecraft has ever traveled, thanks to a 4.5-inch-thick carbon-composite heat shield protecting the spacecraft and its instruments.

SWEAP includes two types of instruments, the Solar Probe Cup and Solar Probe Analyzers, designed to directly measure the properties of the plasma in the solar atmosphere, including the solar wind, by counting and characterizing the most abundant particles (electrons, protons and helium ions).

“Congratulations to the entire Parker Solar Probe team for this well-earned recognition,” said NASA acting administrator Janet Petro. “This mission’s trailblazing research is rewriting the textbooks on solar science by going to a place no human-made object has ever been and advancing NASA’s efforts to better understand our solar system and the Sun’s influence, with lasting benefits for us all.”

UAH has been involved with the effort for over 15 years, led by SWEAP co-investigator Dr. Gary Zank, the director of the Center for Space Plasma and Aeronomic Research (CSPAR) and the Aerospace Rocketdyne endowed chair of the Department of Space Science (SPA) at UAH, a part of The University of Alabama System. Zank is also the principal investigator and director of Future Technologies & enabling Plasma Processes (FTPP).

“This is exceptionally gratifying, particularly because we have been exploring our theoretical models for heating of the solar atmosphere, and they are extremely promising,” Zank says. “The PSP mission identified a suite of instruments that were needed and then invited the space and solar physics community to propose for those different instruments. I had a meeting with Dr. Justin Kasper [Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics] about a plasma instrument for PSP, and that and follow-up meetings built the team from which SWEAP was effectively born.”

In addition to Zank’s theoretical and modeling expertise, UAH brought considerable hardware skills to the team through its partnership with the NASA solar group, particularly Dr. Jonathan Certain at Marshall Space Flight Center.

“CSPAR had engineering expertise as well, so this combination made CSPAR and UAH a natural partner for both instrument development and subsequent testing and calibrating,” Zank explains. “Jonathan Certain and I had an excellent student, Phyllis Whittlesey, who did her Ph.D. work on the calibration of the Faraday Cup for the SWEAP instrument, and she is now highly placed at Berkeley and still working on PSP. The team has grown quite large at “CSPAR/SPA and the Department of Space Science, and a lot of great work has been done by my colleagues that I introduced to the subject and to PSP.”

Those colleagues include Dr. Lingling Zhao and Dr. Laxman Adhikari, both assistant professors in SPA and CSPAR, together with researcher Dr. Masaru Nakanotani, Dr. Ken Wright (retired), Dr. Nikolai Pogorelov (Distinguished Professor in Space Science and CSPAR) and Dr. Tae Kim (CSPAR researcher), along with numerous UAH students.

While focused on defining the characteristics of solar particles, the mission has resulted in unexpected observations as well, such as solar “switchbacks,” phenomena characterized by a sudden and large change – essentially magnetic field reversals that “kink” or zigzag in the direction of magnetic field lines. “We managed to provide one of the primary theories to account for those,” Zank notes. “So, the combination of observations and theory that PSP has enabled has been exceptionally exciting.”

PSP and SWEAP are making two more close passes to the sun this year, and the mission shows no signs of slowing down when it comes to supporting the future of in-situ solar research.

“PSP just completed a second perihelion on March 23, the same distance as the Dec. 2024 closest approach, and the encounter proved successful with no complications,” Zank says. “We're awaiting that data now. Another approach should occur on June 19. Given the health of the PSP, it is almost certain the mission will be extended, which will continue to be extremely exciting and valuable. That, together with Solar Orbiter, the European Space Agency mission on which I am a co-investigator, will mean another five years of in situ research, making this a truly golden age of solar physics research.”

Kristina Hendrix
256-824-6341
[email protected]

Julie Jansen
256-824-6926
[email protected]