In 2018, NASA invited people worldwide to send their names to the Sun. More than 1.1 million did and their names are still travelling aboard Parker Solar Probe

In 2018, NASA invited people around the world to send their names on a historic journey towards the Sun aboard a spacecraft designed to fly through its outer atmosphere.

The campaign attracted 1,137,202 confirmed submissions. NASA digitally stored the names on a small memory card installed on the Parker Solar Probe before its launch, making them a permanent part of one of the agency’s most ambitious solar missions.

The memory card is attached to a plaque that also carries photographs of physicist Eugene Parker and a copy of his landmark 1958 paper on the solar wind. The spacecraft was named after Parker, whose work helped shape scientists’ understanding of the constant stream of charged particles flowing from the Sun.

More than 1.1 million names collected in seven weeks

NASA opened the public name-submission campaign on March 6, 2018, inviting people to participate in the Parker Solar Probe mission by sending their names to the Sun.

The campaign closed on April 27 at 11:59 p.m. EDT. In just over seven weeks, 1,137,202 names were submitted and confirmed, according to NASA.

The names were subsequently transferred to a memory card and installed on the spacecraft on May 18, 2018, at the Astrotech processing facility in Titusville, Florida, near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

The plaque carrying the memory card also serves as a tribute to Eugene Parker. In 1958, Parker proposed that the Sun continuously releases a stream of charged particles and energy into space. The phenomenon was later known as the solar wind.

The spacecraft was named in his honour, making Parker Solar Probe the first NASA mission named after a living person.

A spacecraft built to withstand the Sun’s extreme environment

Parker Solar Probe launched from Florida on August 12, 2018, aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket.

The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory designed and built the spacecraft and manages the mission for NASA. Parker carries four scientific instrument suites designed to study the Sun’s magnetic fields, plasma and energetic particles, while its imaging instrument captures observations of the solar wind and the surrounding solar atmosphere.

The spacecraft’s target is the Sun’s corona, its outer atmosphere that extends millions of miles into space.

Reaching the corona required Parker to withstand conditions far more extreme than those encountered by most spacecraft. Its thermal protection system shields the spacecraft and its instruments while its Sun-facing side is exposed to intense heat.

The mission was designed as a seven-year journey involving repeated passes around the Sun. With every orbit, Parker would move closer to the star, allowing scientists to collect measurements from regions of the solar environment that had never previously been explored directly.

For the millions of people whose names were placed aboard the spacecraft, that meant their digital signatures became part of a probe travelling through one of the most extreme environments in the solar system.

Parker became the first spacecraft to fly through the Sun’s corona

Parker Solar Probe achieved a major milestone in 2021 when it became the first spacecraft to fly through the Sun’s corona.

NASA continues to operate the mission, with Parker making repeated close approaches to the Sun to study its atmosphere and solar wind.

During its closest approaches, the spacecraft has come to within about 3.8 million miles of the Sun’s surface and reached speeds of roughly 430,000 miles per hour, making it the fastest human-made object ever recorded.

By 2026, Parker had completed its 28th close approach. NASA reported that the spacecraft again reached a record distance of about 3.8 million miles from the Sun during its June 8, 2026 encounter, with its systems operating normally.

The scientific observations collected during these encounters are helping researchers understand the solar wind, the Sun’s atmosphere and the mechanisms behind solar activity.

Understanding these processes is important for Earth as well. Solar eruptions and other forms of space weather can disrupt satellites, communications networks, navigation systems and power infrastructure, while also posing risks to astronauts.

What happened to the names sent to the Sun?

The 1,137,202 names are not being individually transmitted towards the Sun.

Instead, they remain digitally stored on the memory card attached to the Parker Solar Probe as the spacecraft continues its mission around the star.

The names share the plaque with Eugene Parker’s photographs and a copy of his 1958 paper, linking the public participation campaign to the scientific work that inspired the spacecraft’s name.

What began as a seven-week NASA invitation in 2018 has therefore become a permanent part of a spacecraft that continues to explore the Sun.

The names may occupy only a tiny memory card compared with Parker’s scientific instruments, but they have travelled aboard a spacecraft that has gone closer to the Sun than any human-made object before it — carrying a small digital record of more than one million people along for the journey.