Baltimore (MD) - NASA and Johns Hopkins University engineers and scientists are developing a new spacecraft that will fly closer to the Sun than any other man-made object. The NASA Solar Probe is due to launch in 2015 and costs a cool $750 million. Its mission will be to study the causes of solar storms which can knock out satellites and harm astronauts.

The $750 million craft will have to withstand 2600 degrees Fahrenheit and while this sounds hot, it’s nowhere near the staggering 1.8 million degrees of the Sun’s corona or the 11,000 degrees on the surface. NASA also wants to discover why the corona is so much hotter than the surface.

Read more ... CNN.