By CGTN America

A NASA spacecraft will aim straight for the sun next year.

The space agency announced the red-hot mission Wednesday at the University of Chicago.

This image made available by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory on May 31, 2017, depicts NASA's Solar Probe Plus spacecraft approaching the sun. /AP Photo

Scheduled to launch in summer 2018, NASA’s Solar Probe Plus will fly within four million miles of the sun’s surface – right into the solar atmosphere. It will be subjected to brutal heat and radiation like no other man-made structure before.

The purpose is to study the sun’s outer atmosphere and better understand how stars like ours work.

The announcement came during a ceremony honoring astrophysicist Eugene Parker, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago.

Eugene Parker, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago, holds a replica of the Parker Solar Probe, named after him, at the William Eckhardt Research Center, the University of Chicago, on May 31, 2017. /AP Photo

Learn more about the mission at NASA’s website:

https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/parker-solar-probe